Short-toed eagle

As the eagle was still around on the Saturday we decided to drive over to Ashdown Forest in the morning. We found Gill Lap car park and as we jumped out the eagle was being watched as it flew around and up the valley. I managed to watch it briefly as it flew behind the holly bush and then it disappeared, apparently carrying a snake. We moved over the road and out of the way of the bush and eventually saw it fly above the trees above the distant ridge. It flew up and tussled with a buzzard for a while but never came very close before going very high and heading off south. We hung around for a while and then decided to go looking for Silver Studded Blue butterflies, following directions from DB.
We parked in the car park and worked our way down to the heather and found several male and female butterflies, especially when the sun popped out.





We then returned to Old Lodge to look for some dragonflies, again with info from DB. We took the wrong track at first but saw several Redstarts, one a lovely male as well as Woodlarks and Spotted Flycatchers.
The small pools and seeps had a few dragons buzzing about, including a female Emperor ovipositing.
Walking back to the car park we watched a couple of Woodlarks and then learnt that the eagle had been seen flying over the trees and it re-appeared for a short while before dropping down again. We decided to go back to Gill Lap but there were no more sightings and we went home.



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