Railway walk

After lunch we decided to go for a walk along the old railway town to Turners Field. It was lovely and warm even under the expanding canopy.
Turner's Field has a small herd of Herefords which were clustered round licking a spot just inside the kissing gate. A buzzard soared up and over. We walked round one of the fields and as we got to the bottom there was a rough patch with some flowers and where there were at least 5 Meadow Browns, 8/9 Common Blues, a Small White and a couple of Gatekeepers.
On the way back I found some Shieldbugs, first on some Hedge Woundwort and then on some nettles, plus a Speckled Wood flicking it's wings in a sunny spot. Very relaxing.

















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A glimpse of the past

Following a day at the Bird Fair my drive across the marsh was a little later than usual. We drove into New Romney and checked out the Autumn Ladies Tresses round the canon at Littlestone. There were several 100 dotted about, and a drive towards the water tower found many more growing in lawns and on the verges.







As we turned onto the coast drive we saw several people gathered with cameras watching the skies. A sudden loud sound revealed 2 Lancaster bombers flying by!! By the time we stopped they were heading away. Chatting to Dorothy we heard them returning so a mad scramble to park the car and get ourselves and cameras out of the car in time to photograph this unique event. Luckily I managed to get some shots of the 2 bombers, both separately and together. They were followed by a Spitfire and a Hurricane and 10 minutes later by a Dakota. As we had absolutely no knowledge of this event we were extremely lucky to be where we were when we were.
















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Catch up

The last few weeks have seen summer take hold. Dungeness is looking brown again and the flowers are going over. The emphasis lately has been on moths and butterflies with numbers in my trap nearly reaching a hundred on a couple of nights. I have had a couple of new species for the trap, which is nice and it's been interesting looking back to see the differences over the last 20+ years.



The grassland butterfly numbers have been good round the obs with hundreds of Meadow Browns, Gatekeepers and Common Blues with growing numbers of Marbled Whites, including this odd looking one.

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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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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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