A Right Royal Disappointment

 I spent a great deal of my formative nature spotting years roaming around Kingswood nature reserve in the company of the now sadly departed Greig Martin. As I had some business up that end of the town and  it was the last day of my holiday I decided to wallow in nostalgia a bit and pay a call to my old stomping ground.  The X4 was fashionably late and I arrived somewhat later than I anticipated but get there I did in hot and sunny conditions.

Gatekeeper and Silver-washed Fritillary

Ash Dieback has had a noticeable effect on the wood and in truth I'd never realised quite how many were there. Most Ashes now appear to be dead or dying and there were several fallen trees lying on the woodland floor. In truth it looked to me as if little active management is occurring now and the gaps provided by these fallen trees provided some of the only ones in the canopy. With the rides mostly in shade and a lot of the understorey covered in brambles my hopes of finding interesting butterflies proved to be optimistic. Best of a small selection was a male Silver-washed Fritillary though the most surprising was a Marbled White, neither species would have been present in those good old days. Only one dragonfly was seen and that was a Common Darter, the large pond known to masses of school ponds as the swamp had completely dried up. The only birds of note were several begging juvenile Buzzards which were another species absent in my youth.

Common Darter and Common Blue

Having finished my woodland wander I paid a quick call on the lake at Oakley Vale which has a generous fringe of reeds around it. Things were quiet here too, there were about half a dozen singing Reed Warblers and quite a few Swifts hawking over the water. Two or three Black-tailed Skimmers, two Banded Demoiselles and several Common Blues made up the ode quota while a Common Blue butterfly was my first of the new brood.