Southwater Country Park - 21st/22nd July

Hello again Blogland

While I was walking around Southwater on Saturday morning I was beginning to wonder just how many photos of 6-spot Burnet Moth's I can get away with on the blog? To me, they are one of those things that, even though they are fairly common in places, their black and pink pattern is something hard to get tired of but that might not be that case for most other people.


6-spot Burnet Moths

Luckily, I should never have been so worried! Mainly because there were a few Marbled Whites and I can’t think that anyone could get tired of them but the notable sightings of the week kept appearing after that.


Marbled White

I decided to try doing a Common Spotted Orchid survey on Saturday afternoon despite a lot of them going over. I am very glad I did though because I found this lovely Poplar Hawk-moth.




Poplar Hawk-moth

There is quite a few Common Centaury out too. This one was in the playground.

Common Centaury

Amongst all of these were a few records of subjects that weren’t so easy to photograph. The first was a Red Kite on Saturday morning that I noticed out of the cafe window circling over Cripplegate Lake. It didn’t hang around long and went south.

Next was another Purple Emperor that nearly flew into my face along the path from the Skate Park Bridge up to Quarry Lake. If it had been actually been flying at me, I wouldn’t have been surprised because the day before I saw a Purple Emperor near Balcombe chasing off a Kestrel! On Sunday there had been a Fritillary flying up and down the hedgerow in Ben’s Field. Unfortunately, it wasn’t hanging around and was either disappearing up and over the trees of flying so fast along the path there was no way I could keep up with it so it will have to remain a Fritillary sp. for now. There were lots of equally un-photographable Meadow Browns, Gatekeepers, Ringlets and a Blue sp. flew over Quarry field towards the A24. If I had remembered my binoculars there may have been a few more Hairstreak records but that will have to until next weekend!

The Black-headed Gull count on Cripplegate Lake is steadily going up. It was up to 44 on Sunday evening and a Lesser-black Backed Gull was also around Cripplegate Gate as well as a Great-crested Grebe, a young Grey Heron and our resident Mute Swan still here with all 5 cygnets doing well.

One of the nice things about this time of year is the extended times of golden sunlight in the evenings and one of the nicest places to be in under one of the Wild Service Trees at Southwater with its distinctive tulip-shaped leaf and on that note I’ll say goodbye until next week, Tom.

Wild Service Tree