We’ve had some warmer weather over the last few days and certainly on Tuesday it actually felt like it was June, instead of March, with plentiful insects around on the public footpath. Several firsts for the year made an appearance including….
Grammoptera ruficornis – longhorn beetle
Tree bumblebee – first discovered at Langford in 2012
Yellow shell moth
Black-tailed skimmer – first dragonflies of 2013, on the 18th June!
Chrysis species – ruby-tailed wasp
The butterfly transect produced first records of common blue, brown argus and small copper. Some encouragement, but still very poor numbers, with only 12 individuals counted throughout the whole transect route.
And some recent bird sightings from this week include a peregrine over Phase 1 on Monday and again over Phase 2 yesterday, hobby hunting sand martins, juvenile pied wagtails on Phase 2, yellow wagtail collecting food from the water’s edge on Phase 1, common terns fishing on Phase 1, grey partridge on Phase 3 and the first taste of autumn (at least ornithologically speaking), with a small group of pochard and teal on site on Tuesday.