Deene Delivers

 This morning I took a lengthy trek from Bears Lane, Weldon across the fields to Deenethorpe Airfield and then on to Deene before returning to Weldon. Much of my walk turned out to be uneventful, there were quite a lot of butterflies enjoying the warm sunshine but most were either browns or whites with the occasional Small Tortoiseshell adding a splash of colour.

Juvenile Willow Warbler and Essex Skipper.

Deenethorpe provided one of the highlights with a sighting of an Essex Skipper which was my first certain record of the year. I crossed the road from here to look at Deene Lake inflow where I failed to find any Green Sandpipers but did see plenty of Green Plovers as a large flock of Lapwings were in residence. Best ode here was a White-legged Damselfly in amongst the more numerous Banded Demoiselles. From here I moved on the the main lake concentrating my efforts on the area below the dam. A Grey Wagtail was seen close to the weir and there were at least four Little Egrets feeding in the margins. My main target here today however was Willow Emerald, Deene has produced my first records of this attractive species for the last two years and I was rather hopeful of making it a third in a row.

White-legged Damselfly and Willow Emerald.

Happily for me the Willow Emeralds were in a cooperative frame of mind and I saw four without having to leave the footpath. One of them landed briefly on the peak of my cap but didn't linger - perhaps a close view of my face was more than it could take! Another highlight was only my second Scarce Chaser here with a female giving some very good views. Also enjoyable to watch was a group of white butterflies mud puddling. Given that I had a further wildlife spotting trip to take today I didn't hang around for much longer before route marching back to Weldon and the bus home.

Scarce Chaser and white butterflies.