Braving The Breeze

 A day of sunshine and cloudy spells with a fairly gusty westerly breeze saw Alan Shorrock and I take a trip along to the Nene Valley. Before that we had a quick check for migrants at Willowbrook Industrial Estate but our only discovery was that the wind was unpleasantly cold! News from yesterday from the Stanwick area suggested that we might be in with a shout of seeing Cattle Egret again so our next stop was near the Diamond Centre at the western end of the complex.

Great White Egret and Willow Emerald

It took a while as we trudged along towards the river but eventually we reached a bridge from where some cows were in view. Luckily for us a Cattle Egret chose to fly up from the long grass in which it had been feeding and landed on a cow's back. Distant views where achieved through the scope before the constant harassment from Jackdaws made it fly from view. Try as we might our efforts to relocate the egret met with failure, we saw Little and Great White but no further trace of the Cattle. Once we had returned to the car we made the short trip to Irthlingborough Lakes and Meadows for a rare visit to the reserve.

Peregrine

In birding terms there was little of interest, a single Great White Egret was the only thing that springs to mind. Despite the wind we did manage to find a few insects, there were no surprises but it's nice to see anything this late in the season. Three species of butterfly included a few Red Admirals on brambles or Ivy and also singles of Small White and Comma. It was a treble of odes too, Migrant Hawkers, Common Darters and a Willow Emerald made up the list. Having then paid a successful visit to one of the county's Peregrine sites we finished our day at a wind swept Desborough Airfield. Our walk did not provide too much of interest but Shozzer did find a nice male Stonechat which was my first migrant one of the Autumn.

Stonechat