Friday 25 July 2008

Friday 25th July

The hot weather continued and drew me out butterfly hunting again. I cycled around Oaken Wood, Barming during my lunch hour and was pleased to find my first Painted Lady of the year (well for Kent anyway) feeding on buddleia alongside a Red Admiral and 3x Peacocks. Good numbers of Gatekeepers were on the wing and a Holly Blue was seen, but no White Admirals today. Dragonflies were also in good numbers, predominantly Brown Hawkers.
I stopped off to check at the nest near Palmer's Rough to see if I couldn't spot a parent going into feed the chicks - no cativity after 10 minutes so I checked the nest. Empty! All the chicks had gone, obviously too early to fledge but most probably predated. Guess I'll never know what they were.
Later Adrian described a Little Grebe chick he'd found bedraggled on the stream near Bradbourne House, East Malling. Eventually he decided to move it back up to the main lake as it was a good distance, and waterfall, away from there. Hopefully it'll fair better than the nestlings.

4 comments:

Greenie said...

Adam ,
Nice one with the Painted Lady , they have been in short supply this year . Not surprising with all the W. and N. winds we've been getting . Shame they can't survive our winters , and we have to rely on spring migration each year . As you say , good numbers of Brown Hawker about , sad thing is that we only have Migrant Hawker to come , and thats another dragonfly year , unless S. or SE. winds blow over any migrants .

Simon said...

Welldone with the Painted Lady, Adam - haven't seen 1 this year yet.

Simon said...

Welldone with the Painted Lady, Adam - haven't seen 1 this year yet.

Steve said...

Well done with the Painted Lady Adam...not seen one this year...yet