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Friday 14 May 2010

Southerly Winds And Skippers

As I stepped out my front door at 05:40 this morning, I felt wind....no, not that type!

Why is this worthy of mention??? Well our front door is sheltered from all winds apart from anything from the southern sector...and we've not had any winds of note from that direction for almost one and a half months now!!! Because of this, I was straight down to the sea front...

A watch 05:45 - 07:20 wasn't as good as hoped. But still, I did notch up: 4 Great Northern Diver, 1 Red-throated Diver, 44 Gannet, 1 Dunlin, 14 Kittiwake, 2 Common Scoter and 157 Auks sp. (mostly Razorbills). All of this lot flew west, but for one of the GND's and a couple of Gannets.

Seen sod all else today, and over the past couple of days. Where are all the waders??? It's mid May, this is when we usually get a three figure flock of Dunlin on the Estuary! Today I didn't see one here!!!

On Thursday, Karen and I tried to add Duke Of Burgundy to our fritillary list. We went to a place in Somerset where the first of the year had very recently been seen, but thanks to a lot of cloud that didn't want to go anywhere, we didn't get lucky. We both added a new skipper to our butterfly lists though, with three of these...

Grizzled Skipper

I also saw at least ten of these....

Dingy Skipper

Bird-wise, at least three Nightingales kept us entertained by singing throughout our visit. It was also good to hear, and see, Garden Warblers - with at least two present. Karen got all excited when she found an orchid...to me it looked like some vertical hay! I can safely say it was the most boring plant I have ever seen in my life!!!

We are going to try for 'Dukes' again tomorrow... fingers crossed!

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