In search of a Redstart

Every time I go out looking for a Redstart, I invariably find one of these instead...

Lady Wheatear at the Water End horse paddock, Friday (digiscoped)

Not that I’m complaining really. Better a Wheatear than a whole lot of nothing-but-the-usual.

Yesterday, after a couple of Whimbrel briefly joined the Spotted Redshanks at College Lake, I followed in their wake, hoping something else might alight in the shallows. Optimism eventually gave way to a practical realism and I left the Octagon Hide to walk a circuit of the reserve. I was hoping for Cuckoo but, at this time of year, there’s an openness to the possibility that anything could turn up, anywhere. And so it did…

As I walked down through the scrub at the NW end of the reserve, I saw a flash of red as a bird flew from the fence line to a tangle of leafless bramble in the enclosure. It called and then I spotted it at the base of the bush, a beautiful male Redstart. At last! I had been looking for one of these for the past month or so and there he was, a blaze of orange and black and white, with those lovely slate grey upper parts. Unfortunately, I had only seconds to drink in the sight before he skilfully tucked himself away, completely out of view. I waited another 20 minutes but he’d studied the Redstart manual in skulking and there was no way he was going to give me another glimpse.

Still, nothing beats the thrill of the chance encounter with a hoped for passage migrant. I walked back along the west bank footpath, smiling, with House Martins and Sand Martins swooping barely a metre above my head, snatching insects from the air. The nippy NE wind had deterred every other butterfly except for a single male Orange-tip, my first of the season, which perched briefly on a pretty Dog-violet.

When I got up this morning, I was content with the weekend’s birding. Little did I know that the best was yet to come…. More on that tomorrow.

Settled Orange-tips…at last!

Bovingdon Brickworks (BMT): One of my favourite butterflies, which eluded my lens last year, is the Orange-tip (Anthocharis cardamines). Of all the butterflies, it is the one which has, time and time again, made me look like a complete wally. It’s had me running this way and that, round in circles, back and forth, trying to anticipate where it'll land. More often than not, it wouldn’t land, only flutter off through impenetrable scrub. On the rare occasions it did land, it was in the middle of a large Bramble patch, out of range, for less than a second. This week, I got lucky! The weather/temperature was just right on Wednesday. Warm but not sunny and, as a result, the Orange-tips were settling for longer. I would dearly have loved to capture both male and female but had to conceded defeat when it came to the female...this time.

Orange-tip (Anthocharis cardamines), male, underwing, Bovingdon Brickworks, 20/05/2015

Two males were perched together briefly on a grass. I didn’t notice the little bugs crawling down the grass head until I got home and looked at the photo. They are, I think, an immature Mirid bug species, perhaps Leptopterna dolabrata, which feeds on grasses. Anyway, they add a little something to the image, I think.

Orange-tip (Anthocharis cardamines), males & Mirid bugs, Bovingdon Brickworks, 20/05/2015

At the Brickworks yesterday, it was great to see 7+ Brown Argus (Aricia agestis) butterflies. They are having to make do with Forget-me-not and Cowslips at the moment because their preferred nectar plants (Marjoram, Ragwort and White Clover) aren’t flowering yet.

Brown Argus on Forget-me-not, Bovingdon Brickworks, 21/05/2015

Brown Argus on Forget-me-not, Bovingdon Brickworks, 21/05/2015

A particularly brown Brown Argus on Cowslip, Bovingdon Brickworks, 20/05/2015