Traffic in York is a nightmare at the moment. Having collected the daughter from work and taken her home, I had planned to go east but ended up going west so as not to have to crawl across the city.
Nice sunny morning when I arrived at Staveley, the wind was a bit strong and it was cool when not in the sunshine. From the first hide I saw lots of greylag geese with a single swan with them feeding. When it lifted its head out of the water, I was surprised to see it was a whooper swan. Has it been there all summer or is it an early visitor from Iceland?
From the next hide I saw a large family of mute swans.
I have not seen many swan families this year, I don't know if the wet spring had an effect on them, however there were 7 young in this family group. The next hide is closed for safety reasons, a chap I met in the car park told me that there had been a spate of vandalism
Lots of greylag and canada geese and lapwings.
On my way back to the first hide I saw this holly bush with lots of bees on the flowers and at least 7 red admiral butterflies.
Large numbers of speckled wood butterflies on nearby brambles
This large caterpillar was crossing the path.
I have no idea what it is.
From the first hide I saw a hobby chasing dragonflies. After catching a few it landed in this tree
It never got any closer, this is very very heavily cropped!
If you try hard you might just be able to make it out, It is perched on the middle branch!
As I was watching the hobby, I noticed something fly in front of me. A whinchat had landed on a fence post.
Not a brilliant picture due to the distance from the hide, plus the vegetation kept blowing in front of the bird.
A pleasant few hours in between traffic jams!
No comments:
Post a Comment