A day off after a Bank Holiday Monday is always a good thing. Today I met up with John and we headed north of the border, all 5 miles of it, to the Lamberton / Burnmouth area, not far along the A1 past Berwick. This place is only 35 miles from home, so for us its considerably closer than swathes of SW Northumberland.
With a reasonable weather forecast in the offing we were hoping to catch up with the colony of
Small Blue butterflies residing on the cliff slopes here. The sun soon emerged from some scattered low cloud to create a warm pleasant afternoon, ideal for butterfly hunting.
We parked at the small car park for the cliff top nature reserve just east of Lamberton and walked north along the scenic coast path. This dramatic and picturesque coastline, in days past,was home to smugglers and seabirds, but now, the smugglers have gone leaving the area to the wildlife. This piece of coast is good for
Peregrines, Small Blues, Yellow Meadow Ants and true cliff nesting House Martins, and today we saw them all, quite easily.
Added to those, we also had several
Small Heath, Wall, Peacock, Green veined White and a Ruby Tiger moth.
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| Smugglers den... |
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| Slope where we had 3 or 4 Small Blues... |
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| Above - Small Blue butterfly. |
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| Peregrine. |
Down the road at Burnmouth, Spotted Flycatcher, Blackcap and Willow Warbler were the only birds of note, while a showy Orange-Tip was best of the inverts...
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| Above - Orange Tip. |
6 comments:
Nice post, great shots Stewart.
Regarding cliff-nesting house martins, I remember when the kids were small, mid 80s, spending a day at Howick on the small patch of beach below the car park. There was a house martin colony on the cliff above us. Do they still get there?
I'll have to have a day up there Stew.
Ian - Cheers.
Alan - No there are no House Martins here now. I remember them from years ago, but not since the last 6 years we've lived here.
Nigel - Its an easy trip Nige, they'll be on the wing til late June as this has been a slow season...worth a trip.
I wonder if they vanished at the time of that catastrophe about 20-odd years ago, drought in the Sahel or something wasn't it? Millions of house martins went missing. That was on top of the 'normal' long-term decline.
Just before then there was s huge colony under the old bridge at Warkworth, hundreds of nests, the sky was black with house martins one morning when I was on the bridge and an American tourist was amazed. A cloudless day and the sun was glinting on the blue backs of the birds over the river. She asked me what kind of martins they were. The next year, they were gone.
Hey Stewart, John told me all about the Deaths Head Hawkmoth, he is a VERY talkative chap, LoL and very loud!! LOL Are you all like that up there Heh Heh Heh.
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