It was Nichola's Saturday in at work today, leaving me to complete a few household chores and other necessary stuff like cleaning out the fish tank and sorting out the boys bikes (raise seat, inflate tyres, re-seat chain on sprockets!). Consequently, no time for enjoying the warm day with bins and camera. In fact the only bit of interest during the morning and early afternoon was the first
Brimstone butterfly of the year fluttering through the garden.
Much later this afternoon when Nichola was back I headed out down the lane. Or at least that was the plan. It had already clouded over a fair bit and started to go dull - after just 15 minutes or so of leaving the house it started to drizzle and I headed home. In the few minutes I enjoyed though, a noted that there are still good numbers of Fieldfares knocking about round here - much more than usual. c70 in one field, with c30 Redwings mixed in. Also picked up a superb male Sparrowhawk sitting in the drizzle on a roof ridge tile on the way home. The only other highlight, if you can call it such, was an unexpected OFFH bonus when two Cormorants flew overhead.
I also picked up a new moth species for the year - numerous unmistakeable tenanted mines on Pyracantha ......
The blister mine of Firethorn Leaf-miner. If you look hard enough (or click for big) you can see the larva underneath the blister.
