Bit of a catch up....

 Time for a catch up about what has been happening on the local patches.

22nd June 2025

Overnight on 22^nd, a thunder storm broke the spell of warmer weather. 

In the morning we took a walk through one of our neglected upland patches, Corby Woods, to the Pond to look for dragonflies. Unfortunately the weather was overcast and breezy so it was an Odonata no-show apart from a couple of Large Red and Common Blue Damselflies but we did see a few things of interest.

 Butterflies were undaunted by the weather. We saw 3 Large Skipper, 7 Red Admiral, 6 Speckled Wood, 1 Small Tortoiseshell, 4 Ringlet, 1 Small Skipper and  1 Common Blue, while Moths included 10+ Brown China Mark, an aquatic breeding moth around the pond, and a Bordered White.

Large Skipper

Ringlet

Small Skipper

A few birds were also added to the notebook – 4 Crossbills, 4 Redpolls, 3 Tree Pipits, 9 Willow Warbler, 1 Buzzard and 2 Garden Warblers, one of which was unusually showy. It seemed to mob us as we walked past so there may have been a nest of newly fledged young nearby.

Garden Warbler mobbing us on the path so we moved along.

The last week of June at home had ups and downs. The down just about out weighing the up!

28th June 2025.

We were coming back through our village with the dog when we bumped into a family of Spotted Flycatchers. This was the first local breeders here for about a decade so it was great to see them. My first thought was how have I missed the adults when I am out several times every day here? All I can think is that they have been in the grounds of the Old Rectory, a place without access.

Spotty Fly family, with adult at the top.

A Peregrine was seen on a couple of days too, once low overhead carrying prey of some kind, looked like a young Jackdaw maybe?

Now, on to the downside. Tim Dean the Northumberland County Recorder advised that a visitor to the area from Lincs had seen and photographed a female Honey Buzzard coming in-off the sea at Seahouses Farm at 11am this morning! Ive never seen one in the county and it is 30 years since my last in the UK, so that one smarts a bit...A first for my patch.

 29th June 2025

After a short visit to the Aln Estuary first thing where it was nice to see a brood of 3 Avocet chicks teetering around their pool, a sight that would have been considered unthinkable here only 10 years ago we moved up to Alnwick to look for White letter Hairstreaks.

We didn’t have to look far. As we parked beside the Denwick Bridge bottle banks, 3 were flitting around the top of an elm on the edge of the car park but they stayed up top while we were there. 

Downstream, through the wood a damp field corner was home to a pair of Broad bodied Chasers that gave great views when the male was pestering the egg laying female. A few Banded Demoiselle were on the river.

Back home, a Hummingbird Hawk-moth was nectaring on the valerian especially planted for the purpose.

Hummingbird Hawk-moth.

1st July 2025

Let the Seawatching commence...

An hour at Cullernose Point this evening in torrential rain, never been so pleased to have the fishing brolly. 61 Manx Shearwater N, 1 Puffin, 71 Sandwich Tern, 1 Little Tern, 4 Arctic Tern, 22 Common Scoter, 1 Whimbrel, 6 Lesser black backed Gulls. Not earth shattering but it is always good to make a start.

6th July 2025

The morning started with a Raven calling from Hips Heugh outside our garden.

I headed off toe Seaton Point to wait for John. While loitering I had good views of an immature Peregrine hunting the 300 Linnets in the weedy field, a male Kestrel and a Barn owl hunting too.

We wandered to the bench on Seaton Point and put the morning in watching the tide back in.

In calmish conditions we had - 

 

Shelduck 16 inc with 2 broods of 6 and 8.

Goosander 2 N

Golden Plover 3 sum plum on the rocks

Whimbrel 2

Bar tailed Godwit 2 S

Common Sandpiper 1 on the rocks

Dunlin 2

Puffin many, 50+ all over the place.

Lesser black backed Gulls 13 N

Roseate Tern 12 N

Sandwich Tern 111 N

Arctic Tern 5 N

Common Tern 4 N 

Manx Shearwater 17 N

Sedge Warbler 1

Whitethroat 9+   

Mothing update - 

Few Dark Swordgrass this week.

Zeiraphera isertana a first for me.

Monochroa ctytisella

Sand Dart

Cydia fagiglandana

Freyers Pug

Large Twin Spot Carpet

Rhigognostis incarnatella, a pair of them.

Crocidosema plebejana about 5th for the county.

Standard and dark forms Slender Brindle.

The Summer doldrums?

 Mid- summer can often appear to be a relatively quiet spell for watching wildlife, and my lack of blog posts seems to reflect that, but that really depends on whether you can keep an open mind to observation opportunities.

 Sunday morning dawned misty after a day of showers. It was quite warm and humid with little wind.

 We decided on staying local beginning by meeting up at Alnmouth Football Club car park at 7am. With a high tide of 4.9 mtrs peaking at 8.15am our first stop was a wander along the cycle path to the wooden bench seat that overlooks the Aln estuary. Although it is only July, for many wading birds autumn has already begun. The breeding season is over and flocks of birds begin to gather at traditional wintering spots or make short stop overs on their way to these spots.

 On the Aln, there was a nice gathering of birds roosting out the tide, waiting until it recedes enough to allow them onto the muddy margins to feed. There were 19 Black tailed Godwits, half of which were still in brick russet breeding plumage, a loudly calling Greenshank from high northern moorlands dropped in to sit with 50 more local Redshanks. Further down near the sea, a large gathering of gulls and terns sat out on the sand bank. It was a mixed flock of Sandwich, Arctic, Common and a brace of Roseate Terns beside our larger gulls. While watching the birds, they all lifted in a ‘dread’ when a female Marsh Harrier flew low overhead and away to hunt the rougher edges of surrounding fields.    

As the tide began to drop and the mist was burnt off by the sun, we changed tack and headed off to Alnwick on a butterfly hunt.

 The bridges at Denwick road and Canongate are good vantage points to look for a newer addition to Northumberland’s butterfly fauna, the White letter Hairstreak.   At the Denwick Bridge facing the castle, one Hairstreak was flitting around the tops of some sucker Elms just below eye level from the high vantage point. Across the road another three were in a territorial dispute, spiraling and spinning off the higher canopy only to drop back again to the leafy tops.

White letter Hairstreak

Along at the other end of town, Canongate is usually a good stop for them but a lot of Elms here have been chopped so we didn’t see any. Hopefully there are still a few small trees to allow a population to breed unseen.

While here, a brave Common Sandpiper outstood passing cars and caravans and even a pelaton of shouting cyclists from the bridge wall itself. It called a loud piping tone to its mate on the river rocks below. As we watched a family of fledged Kestrels called high up above us and a few tardy tropical looking Banded Demoiselles danced along the river edges.

Common Sandpiper on Canongate Bridge

All to soon it was lunch time, and for us our excursion was over until next week. 

The garden moth trap has done well this past week with three species new to VC68! On the socials you see trappers further south cock-a-hoop if the catch a new species for the tetrad or 10km sq where they live. Up here, with few moth traps working, it is perfectly reasonable to expects new VC or even County species each year. Ive no idea on the 10k breakdown. Im not even sure anyone else traps within that range! Maybe one or two?

 

Brown-tail . Very few county records since the influx year of 1991. 

Hedya ochroleucana only a couple of modern Northumberland records but historically Bolam suggested it was common along the Tweed.

Acrobasis repandana a rare moth in Northumberland and a first for VC68. 

Eudonia truncicolella another garden first . Quite a distinctive Scop.

Another butterfly lifer...

...this time on the doorstep!

Lets go back to the 28th July and it was 28 degrees with full sun. ( Rain all day today).

When we were down in Fermyn Woods I was hoping to catch up with White Letter Hairstreak, a very elusive butterfly in Northumberland. Our luck was out and it remained as hidden as ever.

On our return, inspired by Iain Cowe's findings in the scottish borders only 30 miles to the North where he had located several spots for WLH up the Tweed catchment area, we decided to check elm trees locally.

Unsure how to go about this, I met John in Alnwick and we had an idea to cruise around and stop when we saw some elms, preferably ones along the River Aln as there river valleys seem to be good spots for the butterfly.

First stop was Canongate where some sucker elms were hanging over a tall stone wall. We stopped for tea and breakfast and scanned around. Across the road next to us was a mid sized bushy elm tree on a field edge. We were laughing about the hopelessness of it all when I noticed a movement through the outer branches. Tea forgotten, we scanned hard and there - a White letter Hairstreak! The first adult for VC68  after Iain had located eggs in February up on the borders.

We hopped into the field and sat down. In a few minutes, one WLH perched out on the lowest branches and gave great views. We finally saw two more here making three in total. A great result, in our home town too.

Surely this was a fluke? We drove across to the opposite end of town where the Aln runs east. Sure enough, a riverbank elm looked good so we gave it half an hour. Our luck was in, another 2 WLHs were flitting through the branches and landing briefly where good binocular views were had.

Two sites in an area previously unknown for this insect cant be bad...I wonder how many there are out there?