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.














- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad