The Emperors Come to Town

At last a brightish day and time for some moth sex! Clive came over with his "girls" - recently hatched Emperor moths - all ready to do their thing and get pheromoning in the hope of luring in some wild males.  We tried them out in various locations around the garden, dangling them in their net and periodically trying them out in the greenhouse to warm them up and get them in the mood. They started shaking their bits and "calling", but males came there none.... Only the captive ones that Clive had also brought, and even they didn't want to mate - perhaps just as well, as the girls are their sisters! Some nice stuff in the garden meanwhile, however - orange tip females laying their eggs on hedge mustard, and various bees going about their business. Clive spotted that blue tits are nesting in the apple tree again - that had passed me by! Anyway, we left the girls to it and scooted off to Foulden Common, where we met Sue P. Fitful sunshine didn't look great for butterflies, but speckled wood and peacock (one each) showed up and then we saw a couple of very fresh-looking grizzled skippers, nectaring on milkwort, and then another two in the old car park area near the gate - never seen them there before. Great to see them, the brave vanguard of this season's flight!

Sad Wet Spring

Spare a thought for the ground-nesting birds. All this rain and cold can't be good news for eggs and tiny chicks, nor indeed for butterflies, who cannot fly in this mess and therefore cannot feed = death. Well into May now and no change. Somehow the summer migrants are struggling in - swifts over Oxborough today, the nightingale still singing at Boughton Fen (plus cuckoo there daily), sedge, reed and grasshopper warbs all busy at Lakenheath Fen yesterday evening, where also a female garganey and pair of cranes flying into the reedbed - two two-week-old chicks tucked away in there, apparently - and a very fine hobby low over the reeds... Made a very wet trip to Sculthorpe Moor last Thurs, looked Irish and emerald-like in the rain, lovely marsh harrier male sailing about and my best ever views of bullfinches, with two pairs feeding on the seed table near one of the hides. Foulden Common also looking wonderful right now, with rafts of cowslips, cuckoo, willow warbs and a garden warb in fine voice - no turtle doves yet tho :-(. And this evening a great discovery on the edge of the very wet centre: butterworts! I've never found them there before and am hopeful that the rain will at least give us a good show of orchids there next month.

Not the best pic ever taken of bullfinches, but you get the point... 

Foulden Common - can't remember the cowslips ever being this good there.

Butterworts! Just coming out, so must go back in a day or two and 

hopefully when not so gusty. Might just get it in focus...