Look down, Look up!

A lovely morning and a message telling of a singing oriole at Dungeness had me up and out early. The moth trap held lots of moths with White point and Buff Arches among others.






The oriole hadn't been heard or seen for a while by the time I arrived but several birds had been caught, including a family of Great Tits. There was no sound on a walk round the trapping area and nets but the weather deteriorated and we had to shelter under the bushes a few times to to dodge the raindrops.
As it was dry we decided to do a bit of botanising and drove up to Crete Road, Folkestone for Late Spider Orchid. There were lots of cars and people milling round and we discovered the reason when 9 Red Arrows scorched over our heads to give a great display at the Air Show. An unexpected bonus.












The orchid bank held 5 species of orchid. As well as the Late Spider, there were 9 Man Orchids, several Pyramidal and Common Spotted and a single Fragrant. The variety of colours was interesting. We did a quick foray onto a site for Bee Orchid with 3/4 Small Blue Butterflies.
As we were close we went to find a site for Clove-scented (Bedstraw) Broomrape on a slope below Crete Road East. This entailed a vertiginous trek down towards the houses and then a sideways path through some nettles and bushes to find some nice spikes, strongly scented of cloves! On the way we found some Shieldbugs to be identified and recorded.














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Chipmunks

Moral: Ask a man who knows.
An early start for a foray across the channel to some woods south if Brussels to look for a mammal that we had thought about looking for for a couple of years, Siberian Chipmunk. Setting up the sat nav we headed north and then east from Calais via Ghent which brought us into a traffic snarl up as we approached Brussels. We decided to take the next turning off and try and navigate our way through the side lanes. We managed to reach the first car park in the Foret de Soignes by,about 10.30 having seen quite a bit of interesting country side and some pretty villages. The Foret was surprisingly quiet with Red-eared Terrapin, Grey Wagtail, Tufted Duck, Kingfisher, Great Crested Grebe, Coot, Mallard, Mandarin ducks and Egyptian Geese on the lake and Blue Tits, Great Tits, Chaffinches, Robins and Nuthatches in the Beech trees and over the car park 4 Buzzards. We saw lots of Downy Emerald and Red-eyed Damsels, with one person seeing Banded Demoiselle as well as some Large Red Damselflies and a few Emperors patrolling the Pond. Odd flowers of interest were Small Balsam, a Rampion and Lily of the Valley. The Beech trees were monumental and cathedral like, but we saw no,sign of the chipmunk so we moved to a second site where the Foret was very similar and though we heard a few rustles in the undergrowth there was no sign of the chipmunk. A third site looked very promising, with scarce chaser in a pond but a chat with a couple of friendly locals told us that the chipmunks hadn't been seen for a while. One last site was the Rouge Cloistre, an area of woodland, fish ponds for the monks in the abbey, which were used to control the water for the mill, and some gardens and allotments. It looked very unlikely but asking a man sitting on the bench we were told that he had seen them a couple of days ago along the edge of the lake towards the end. We walked along the path to the second lake and suddenly, there was one foraging along the edge of the path. A second one scuttled near the path before disappearing up the bank.





A further 3 were seen in this bit of the forest and then more were foraging among a pile of brushwood beside the path. As we walked back to the car we saw 2 or 3 more making a total of at least 12 individuals.








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The last month

Various problems with laptops etc and a slight lethargy means that there have been no posts for a while. The last month has had some lovely days and a few highlights are the orchids on Bonsai bank with the Duke of Burgundy butterfly, some nice moths in the trap, catching up with a Blyth's Reed Warbler in the trapping area and a great day out with friends visiting Monet's Garden in Giverny, France.











A day at Bletchley Park, courtesy of my late Uncle's donation, was very interesting and brought home the atmosphere and conditions of war time and how much we owe those people who worked so hard to keep us safe and shorten the war. Huts 3 and 4 have been restored to what they would have looked like during the war. Very nostalgic seeing things like Player's Navy Cut cigarettes and some of the clothes.















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