Sex On The Common

 Grizzled sex... damn auto focus, it preferred the tormentil!

 Male Bullfinch keeping an eye out

Basking dingy, pausing from its frantic territorial circuits

Just back from Foulden Common, finally a sunny and properly warm day... A couple of grizzled skippers were hard at it in the first bay on the right, allowing a very close approach and deeply engrossed in ensuring future generations of their kind grace the common. Brimstone and orange tips also in evidence, plus singing reed bunting, sedge warbler and several bullfinches, including a particularly obliging male. The next bay along had a very fine dingy skipper, beating the bounds very zealously and seeing off intruders, not least a very large bumble bee....

Shadwell Wood

Off on the oxlip trail, to Shadwell Wood, north of Saffron Walden. Totally delightful, a real working wood with pollards and coppices but still with a wistful and rather remote feel. Fencing helps keep rabbits and deer out, with the result that there's a fuller ground flora here than I can recall seeing for quite some time anywhere in East Anglia. The oxlips had largely done their thing, but early purple orchids and herb paris more than made up for that, and there were several plants of wild daphne and other treats such as sanicle and a peculiar arrowhead-leaved bindweed. Looks like a good potential site for nightingale, but the mercurial songster didn't dare brave the steely grey and cold day....

Latest Expeditions

Grrr, what a hapless blogger am I. Lots goin' on, but never enough time to talk about it. So, working backwards over the last couple of weeks, can start with an evening stroll today in the forest opposite Cockley Cley Lake...

CC Lake looking mellow and full, heron fishing and coot on nest, 

so all's well with the world.

Plenty of birdlife about - yellowhammers, willow warbler and whitethroat singing, plus a singing tree pipit - no parachuting though :-(

Tree pipit at full throttle, courtesy of my trusty Canon Powershot!

The dome-shaped tree is actually a Scots pine engulfed by rather artful ivy...

Breckland pines, somehow one never tires of them.