A warm week with a wet start and a humid end, very heavy rain on Thursday night left much surface water on the trails and roads.
A week with all the expected summer species seen including a late(ish) cuckoo on Tuesday, two bitterns in flight together on Friday, marsh harriers feeding young and at least two hobbies visible from Reception Hide. The reedbed warblers are still singing, but showing signs of slowing in their vigour, while chiffchaff and willow warbler both are still singing well in the woodland. A red kite was seen on Wednesday along with a few buzzards flying over.
A dog otter has been seen a few times throughout the week from reception, fishing and on show for up to an hour at a time. A water vole was particularly brave along Sandy Wall on Friday morning, showing several times as it dragged an enormous cow parsley stem into the reedbed.
Swallowtails continue to cling on, however it would appear as though numbers are tailing off now, just two or three seen on Friday despite decent conditions. The first brood of swallowtails are usually over by now, so we are lucky to still have some flying at all. Large skipper has emerged, but common blue butterflies have proved illusive for the 40 species challenge listers.
Dragonflies are still present in good numbers with Norfolk hawker, scarce and four-spotted chaser, black tailed skimmer and hairy dragonfly being the most obvious of the larger insects. The damselflies are well represented with azure, blue tailed, variable, red eyed, large red and emerald damselflies all still on the wing as well as the elegant banded demoiselle. The next few species to make themselves known will be brown hawker and southern hawker, with small red eyed damselfly not far behind.
The moth traps have been better this week and have finally begun to push up to around 80 species. Day time observations of red tipped clearwing can be had by checking the flowering brambles and we had a white barred clearwing on Friday, which is a first for the reserve.
All paths are open, but the meadow trail is particularly wet in places after last nights rain storm, Lackford Run was overtopped in places thanks to a high tide on Friday too.