Southwater Country Park - 27th/28th July

Hello again Blogland

Another nice weekend at Southwater with a few butterfly sightings than previous weeks owing to the rain. I didn’t even see another Purple Emperor, after my previous weekend’s sightings. As the sun started to appear on Sunday butterflies did start to emerge, including this nice Ringlet.

Ringlet

Quarry Lake was the focus of attention for a while as Stuart and I tried to identify this duck. As it turns out, it was young Tufted Duck which is not an unexpected bird to appear here at all but Tufted Ducks can hybridise with other species and we wondered if that was what we had here. But for the record books, it was simply a Tufted Duck.

Tufted Duck

What was more of a surprise on Quarry Lake, though not photographed, was a Little Egret! I first saw it flying around in a flock of Black-headed Gulls and it did land briefly but I don’t think it hung around for long. The Black-headed Gull count, incidentally, fell to 19 this weekend but it likely to fluctuate as Autumn migration gets underway.

Back in Lepidoptera land, the Southwater Visitor Centre can attract many moths and hopefully it will prove useful as I try to learn more! I do know, because Stuart told me, that this is Yellow-tail moth. It is very white and too bright for my camera, but here it is.

Yellow-tail

What visitors to Southwater CP might notice is the newly fenced area by Cripplegate Lake at the bottom of the slope from the Watersports office. This is to provide the family of Mute Swans and other wildfowl an area to graze and also hopefully prevent them from walking up to where they may be in danger of cars.

Not a big blog this week but some nice highlights,
Tom