Staying Close to Home, The Sequel.

While its nice to travel to other places around the country it's equally good staying in the county, particularly so when we have so many good things to look at. This morning I took a walk around Harry's Park and Laundimer woods while a little later I had a walk around the pond at Weldon.

Purple Emperor.

Fermyn Wood is something of a magnet for butterfly enthusiasts at this time of the year and it's little surprise as the Purple Emperors exert quite a pull. A measure of its success is the sheer number of people you can find wandering around, it's a little too busy for me and that's why I prefer the relatively unknown Harry's Park. Although numbers of butterflies here are generally lower than in the better known wood you can with a little patience pick up all of the goodies.

White Admiral and Black Hairstreak.

I started my walk with a Silver-washed Fritillary which as is normal for them at this time of the year raced by without stopping and neither did the two that I saw afterwards. White Admirals were seen in reasonable numbers, eleven in total, and unlike the frits one did stop for a feed on some bramble blossom. It did not take too long to find my first Purple Emperor, one of four, and all of them spent quite some time feeding on the path. One must have thought that all its Christmases had come at once as it fed on an enormous pile of horse dung, they sure look nice but as for their dining habits...

Meadow Brown and Small White.

There was a little surprise in store for me near the other end of the wood when I found a Black Hairstreak on some brambles. I haven't seen one here before and was grateful to get a record shot. Plenty of other butterflies were fluttering about and these included two Red Admirals, Commas, a couple of Small Torties while numbers of both browns and whites are on the increase. With another stop on today's agenda I headed off towards Weldon where I popped into the George for a couple of pints before heading to the pond.

Small Red-eyed Damselfly and Four-spotted Chaser.

My main target here were Small Red-eyed Damselflies and I was lucky as about ten were seen. Red-eyed Damsels outnumbered them by quite a margin and Common Blues were around in good numbers too. Other damsels seen were Large Red, Azure and Banded Demoiselles, there was no sign of any Variables. Dragons were present in reasonable quantities with two Brown Hawkers being new for the year. Three Emperors, two males and a female were noted and several Four-spotted Chasers were keeping to the margins. Commonest dragon here was Black-tailed Skimmer with a minimum of ten being seen.

Speckled Wood and Small Skipper.

Several interesting butterflies were found and these included my first Small Skippers of the year and also three Marbled Whites. At this point it was getting pretty hot so I left it there and headed for my bus.

Common Blue Damsels, Marbled White and Yellowhammer.