In my last species of the week blog I looked at the different species of gulls and terns that had been seen on the Scrape and mentioned that July is the best month to look for roseate terns at Minsmere. That turned out to be a rather prophetic piece of writing as the very next day one of these beautiful seabirds arrived on South Scrape. It has been seen every day since, but often for only a few minutes at a time, so a bit of luck and patience is required to see it. The black tern, however, seems to have moved on.
Roseate tern by Jon Evans
Little gull numbers continue to rise, with 30 birds seen on South Scrape today. Wader migration is slowly picking up, too, with sightings of green and common sandpiper, greenshank, spotted redshank and ruff today, as well as dunlins, grey plovers, ringed plovers and curlews over the weekend. Add in the 80 Mediterranean gulls, 100+ Sandwich terns and 130+ avocets, and there's plenty to see on the Scrape.
There's plenty to see in the reedbeds too, with regular sightings of marsh harriers, bitterns, hobbies and various dragonflies over the reeds, and a pair of water rails feeding chicks in pools alongside the North Wall. A lovely party of five juvenile bearded tits showed well at North Wall over the weekend, and others have been seen at Island Mere - a welcome bonus as this popular species has been tricky to spot this year.
Bearded tits along the North Wall over the weekend, photographed by Nicky Garrett
Once again, though, it's been our insects that have been stealing the show this week. Digger Alley continues to draw visitors to watch and photograph its residents, including beewolfs, pantaloon bees, ornate-tailed wasps, sand-tailed wasps, ruby-tailed wasps, green-eyed flower bees and pointy-bum bees. Our guides, Steve and Davene, tell me that they've also found at least six "new" species this year that are awaiting identification.
Dragonflies are increasingly numerous too, with a wide variety of insects seen, including brown. southern, migrant and Norfolk hawkers, black-tailed skimmers, emperor dragonflies, four-spotted chasers and all of our common damselfly species present.
Southern hawker by Ian Barthorpe
However, undoubtedly the highlights for many visitors have been the butterflies, especially along the Woodland Trail, where counts of silver-washed fritillary and white admiral have both exceeded 20 - unprecedented numbers here at Minsmere. The best place to see these spectacular woodland butterflies has been a large flowering lime tree along a sunny ride on the western end of the Woodland Trail. This has also been a good place to see this week's featured species from our 70 species to spot challenge: the purple hairstreak.
Purple hairstreaks are specialists of oak woodlands. The adults tend to remain high in the canopy of oak trees, so any time that you can see them lower down is a bonus. The purple is only visible on the upperwing of the males, while the hairstreak is a white zigzag line on the greyish underwing. When perching with closed wings they look very like a pale leaf, making spotting them even harder. The two photos below, both by Jon Evans, nicely illustrate these features.