Pleasant Surprise

You can always rely on nature to provide the odd surprise, usually pleasant. I went to Denbies Hillside this morning, a lovely area of south facing, downland meadow looked after by the National Trust, with the idea of photographing a butterfly or two. Whilst walking gently across one of the lower slopes (not always easy by the way, your feet never seem to be in the right place!), I heard a light buzzing call (poor description really but there you are) and noticed a small yellow shape on a hedge top some way below me, yellowhammer! These are sadly very scarce now and I hadn't seen one in the county for maybe three years. They are another bird with links to farming that have declined dramatically over recent years and whilst i can name a couple of sites in surrey for them, I didn't know they were here.

Yellowhammer

Yellowhammer with a glimpse of the rusty rump

This the sort of place where you bump into and just talk to people of like mind. I had one chat this morning with an older gentleman. We just spent five minutes each talking about what we had seen and the sort of wildlife which he in particular had previously seen. I asked him at one point whether he was a flower man, or into butterflies or birds. His answer was that he just liked nature (by implication in all its myriad forms) which was a nice response. We sometimes think, we oldies, that young people don't share that same fascination but many do and many of them have brilliant knowledge to go with the enthusiasm.

Coming back to butterflies, the main two species were marbled white (one of my favourites actually) and meadow brown, which seem to come in many different shades. Three other species were also present with small numbers of small heath, one ringlet with white spots rather than rings and one blue, which with a bit of help, I identified as a common blue. This site is known, among other things, for the amazing adonis blue but I would expect them on the wing next month sometime. I will be back.

Marbled White

Ringlet

Small Heath

Common Blue

Birds, Butterflies and Dragons

Last weekend was a good wildlife weekend! Friday evening saw me ‘lead’ (sort of) a walk on Horsell Common for nightjar. This is a reliable site for this amazing African visitor with a song, known as churring, unlike any other. It is fair to say that the birds kept us waiting but one duly appeared to give good if brief views to the eighteen souls braving the slightly chilly evening. One landed on a branch and we managed to get some people views through a telescope.

Sunday was of course Fathers Day which seemed as good a reason as any to spend an hour or two wandering around my favourite local site of Papercourt. I have included a few landscapes this time just to give some idea of the variety of habitat to be found here.

Papercourt Marshes SWT Reserve

Papercourt Marshes SWT Reserve

A river runs through it, the Wey in this case

Papercourt Water Meadows

The best of the bird photographs was frankly a bit lucky in that this wren happened to pop up at the edge of the path by the main sailing club gravel pit. He seemed totally unworried by my presence and I spent a little while enjoying the show. Still plenty of other birds singing such as chiffchaff, reed warbler, sedge warbler/ whitethroat and blackcap in particular.

In what has been a poor year for them to date, some butterflies finally showed themselves today, meadow brown being the most common but also large skipper, small tortoiseshell and comma.

Comma

Large Skipper

Demoiselles, mostly banded, continue to be pretty common along the river and stream sides. Best dragon sighting of the day was to come across a patch of floating vegetation at the edge of the big sailing club pit in which scores of common blue damselflies were mating. A red kite drifted over as I left the damselflies to it, a good end to a quietly enjoyable visit.

Common Blue Damselfly

Home Territory

Decided to leave the car on the 'drive' today and started in my own garden. The pond is full of bugs and from it, the emerging dragonfly from a previous post came. Today, we have a pond skater of which I have countless hordes on what is a small bit of water. I do spend more than a few moments on many days staring at these guys, now present in a whole range of sizes as the youngsters emerge, seemingly continuously.

Walked out through Horsell Birch in the hope of a dragonfly or two on a well hidden pond. Absolutely nothing today but it has been good to me before so I will return later in the summer. A distant Greenfinch (and yes this is distant!) plus a buzzard which I didn't notice until it left a tree (very frustrating) completed the compliment for Horsell Birch.







































Once on Horsell Common proper, the first bird I heard was this Whitethroat. It too was initially distant but a little cover, and getting down on my knees, brought him fairly close.

I have always thought that an area on the edge of Horsell Common, which features a series of open fields with a few horses and at least one set of stables, really should have some swallows. Today, for the first time, I actually saw a couple of swallows whizzing in and out of that stable block, hopefully to an active nest site. Too far away for decent photos but lovely just to know they are there.

Frensham in the sunshine

I named last weeks blog 'Full Set', then forgot to put to the mammal in! So......

Frensham Ponds encompass two large 'ponds', lakes really,edged with reedbed, surrounded by heathland and pine woodland. It is a particular favourite and I always enjoy my all too rare visits. I failed to find the spotted flycatcher that seems to appear most years then stopped to enjoy this song thrush; smaller, warmer and altogether neater than its cousin mistle thrush.

Looking out over the open water revealed a few great crested grebe, the odd mallard and flying over, ten or so tufted duck. The lake has two small tern rafts, occupied today by one common tern, with two more to be seen across the water.

The key here, as with all birding frankly, is to use your ears. Learning the calls and song takes a bit of time but is both rewarding and increasingly useful. If nothing else, the calls will tell where to look! Apart from the reed warblers dominating the reedbeds, blackcaps in particular remain in good voice along with chiffchaff, willow warbler and four members of the tit family; great, blue, long tailed and coal, all of which I also saw. Finches are also a big feature here including greenfinch, goldfinch, linnet and of course the humble but still attractive chaffinch.

One of my reasons for coming here today was redstart. I had looked for them at Thursley two weeks before and found none (although they are there!). This time I got lucky, making it to the top of Kings Ridge and deciding that a sit down on one of the many wood benches would be a good idea, looked down the other side of the ridge and found one. They are one of this country's most beautiful birds, a fact which this photograph doesn't really bring out but is was the only one I managed to take!

There seems to be a lot of tree branch in those last two photos!

Largely a heathland specialist, the stonechat has a nice habit of sitting in full view, a fact this youngster has clearly already learnt.

After a gentle but enjoyable three hours (admittedly this also includes mixing it with dog walkers, children and bike riders!), I inevitably finished at Papercourt with a desire to photograph the sedge warblers at Papercourt Lock. They have a nice habit of coming back to the same patch of scrub year after year and their return is one of my main spring markers.

Have a nice week