Butterfly season is well and truly upon us, so it's the turn of another of these fluttering insects to take the spotlight from our 70 species to spot challenge. There's a good variety of colourful butterflies to spot at the moment. Many are familiar visitors to gardens, such as the distinctive and colourful red admiral and peacock or the easily confusable large while and small white. Others, like the grayling that I photographed for Friday's blog, are extremely well camouflaged, while others are restricted to certain habitats, such as the purple hairstreak that featured in last week's blog and tends to remain high in the canopy of oak trees.
This week I turn my attention to one of our most familiar butterflies, the large and colourful red admiral. As in many gardens, the flowering buddleia bushes outside the visitor centre are good places to spot this beautiful butterfly, with it's mixture or red, black and white upperwings. Red admirals are widespread butterflies that can be found in many habitats throughout the UK. Their main requirements are nettles on which to lay their eggs (this is the main caterpillar food plant) and sufficient flowering plants for the adults to find nectar.
Red admiral by Wally Crowther
Many of the red admirals that we see will be locally born, having developed from caterpillars here at Minsmere, or elsewhere in the UK, but others will immigrants from continental Europe. Many people are surprised to hear that such delicate insects can fly across large expanses of sea, yet several of our butterflies are migrants - most notably red admirals, painted ladies and large whites. (Probably the most famous insect migration is that of the monarch butterfly from Mexico all the way to the eastern seaboard of the USA).
I spotted several red admirals on my lunch stroll along the Woodland Trail today, whilst looking specifically for butterflies. I was treated to large numbers of gatekeepers, meadow browns, ringlets and large white, as well as several large skippers and a few small skippers.
Large skipper
I was searching for three particular species that have all been showing well along the Woodland Trail recently. I didn't manage to find either white admiral (although one has been seen this afternoon) or purple hairstreak (which have showed well in North Bushes and near Island Mere today), but I get some amazing views of at least four huge silver-washed fritillaries dancing over the bracken. These impressive butterflies did eventually land, allowing me to grab a couple of photos.
Silver-washed fritillary
The butterflies have been attracted to a large flowering lime tree, but I was surprised to find few butterflies around the equally impressive flowering sweet chestnuts that are scattered around the woodland
Flowering lime (above) and sweet chestnut (below), with very different types of flowers
Whilst walking along the Woodland Trail I had also been keeping my eyes to the sky in the hope of spotting the honey-buzzard that has been reported briefly on several occasions recently. Although it didn't show, I did spot this unusual sighting overhead - I'm reliably informed by colleagues who are into their aircraft that these are a Ukrainian airforce Sukhoi il27 taker and two Sukhoi su27 fighter jets that were heading home from the Royal International Air Tattoo.
Of course, there were plenty of birds to spot around the reserve today too, and a few to hear. I heard a garden warbler singing near the Work Centre, and there were two Savi's warblers still singing at Island Mere, while our guides were fortunate enough to hear and see a turtle dove in the North Bushes. Nearby, a family of water rails proved popular as they fed their chicks in a pool off the North Wall, and a young water vole was spotted at the pond.
A turtle dove, photographed recently on Westleton Heath
There's a great variety of birds visiting the Scrape - clearly attracted to one of the few remaining patches of shallow water on the Suffolk coast. The little gull flock on South Scrape has reached 54 birds, but numbers of black-headed and Mediterranean gulls are starting to decline as birds disperse from their breeding colony. Good numbers of Sandwich and common terns remain on the Scrape, and our second black tern of the summer made a brief appearance on South Scrape this morning. Two garganeys were spotted among the moulting teals, shovelers, gadwalls and mallards, but will be tricky to spot now that they've lost their breeding finery and acquired a more female-like eclipse plumage.
A juvenile Mediterranean gull
The pick of the waders, for those lucky enough to see it, has been a beautiful little stint, still in partial summer plumage. Other waders still at least partly in summer plumage include a knot, several spotted redshanks, a couple of ruffs, a few dunlins and a large flock of black-tailed godwits. Other migrant waders include greenshank, green sandpipers, common sandpipers and whimbrels, while there are still more than 100 avocets on the Scrape.
Greenshank by Jon Evans
Bitterns, marsh harriers and bearded tits have all been seen in the reedbed, and three spoonbills flew from the North Levels this morning, circling over the reedbed before settling back on their favoured pools, out of sight of visitors.
Finally, the large flock of about 1000 common scoters continues to be seen offshore - this is very unusual numbers for mid summer off the Suffolk coast. These are presumably non-breeding birds or failed breeders, and this may signal a poor breeding season for them in the Arctic.