I had a morning walk today in mixed weather. Parking on Cottage Lane and walking to the reserve along the cycle track there was a little owl sat on a pile of hay bales, a usual haunt for it. At the entrance to the reserve wood, I stopped to watch some brown hawker dargonflies patrolling the woodland edge when I noticed a butterfly flying over a patch of brambles. It alighted, enabling me to see it through my binoculars and it was a male purple hairstreak. In typical behaviour it spent most of its time on the bramble leaf with its wings closed, showing the delicate white scribble line and orange spot with a dark centre on the underside of the hind wing. The purple hairstreak then flew up to the lower branches of an ash tree and settled on a leaf in the sunshine, opening its wings to reveal the beautiful purple iridescence on its upper wing. Another purple hairstreak then walked into view on an adjacent leaf. They were the most prolonged and best views I've had of this species - fantastic.
Next to the footpath by the lagoons there was an Essex skipper butterfly in the tussocky grassland, with all black tips to its antennae. Flowerheads of creeping thistle and common knapweed were magnets to many butterflies - meadow browns, gatekeepers, ringlets, a small tortoiseshell and a peacock. A grasshopper warbler was reeling but proved elusive to see and a sedge warbler was carrying food.
Over Phase 2 a hobby was hunting. It would fly up into the head wind and hang motionless in the sky scanning for dragonflies before plummenting down in a swoop to catch one. I saw it catch two dragonflies, probably hawkers, which it ate on the wing - skillfully passing its prey from talons to beak. The sky above Phase 2 was busy with flight activity as swifts, swallows and sand martins zipped over the water and islands - lucky for them the hobby had its eye on dragonflies. Two green sandpipers flew along ditches and a grey wagtail flew over calling.
Walking back along the footpath that skirts around the quarry compound a turtle dove was singing from an area of mature scrub, its rich purring an evocative sound of summer. Then it rained!