These are a few photos from a walk on Baildon Moor and Bracken Hall Green on 21 June 2025. This is the first one where I have added a map showing the track I recorded during the walk. After checking the difference between the camera time and real time I tell the image editor to read the track file and it adds longitude, latitude and elevation to the image file. The editor, darktable, and catalogue, DigiKam, can then display them on a map. Adding the track to the blog post is also quite straightforward. The next thing to work out is how to easily position a flag/link on the blog post map to show where I took each photo. The only way I know of at the moment is labour intensive so more investigation is needed.
There were some nice things to see, birds, butterflies, bugs,caterpillars, and plants. The Meadow Pipits were showing themselves, some with food, but the stars were the Whitethroat, see header image, and the Dragonfly.
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The Birds
The first photo shows what I think are Mum & Dad Meadow Pipit. The next two photos show each of them. Then after a bit of singing they can be seen with food so they have youngsters somewhere. The Whitethroat also has food so it has youngsters tucked away in the Brambles.
I got the impression that the distant Curlew was talking to youngsters. Telling chicks when to duck down out of sight and when to get up and look for food. I am sure that the Lesser Black Backed Gulls that were around would have happily picked up a Curlew chick or two.
Butterflies, Bugs etc.
A few varieties of butterflies were around, Large Skipper, Small Heath, Small Tortoiseshell, (which is massive compared to the Large Skipper and Small Heath) .Meadow Brown, and Peacock caterpillar.
The green Capsid bug is possibly a Potato Capsid (Closterotomus norwegicus) or a Common Green Capsid (Lygocoris pabulinus) which can have two spots behind its head on the pronotum. The Golden-ringed Dragonfly (Cordulegaster boltonii) was rather smart looking. Fortunately I saw it flying and after moving from side to side to change my viewpoint I spotted it on the Bracken.
The Scorpion Fly is of the family Panorpidae, quite possibly a female Common Scorpion Fly (Panorpa communis).
The Plants
Erica tetralix is a Heath – it has needle like leaves and not a Heather – which has flat, fanlike foliage. A Large Skipper is feeding on this plant.
I occasionally look a bit closer at some grasses and then start looking in the books to get quickly lost and confused. It’s a shame because just calling them all Grass doesn’t do it justice. The second Grass has a Small Heath on it.
The Oak is growing in Shipley Glen where it is possible to view the tops of some of the trees from Bracken Hall Green which many people also call Shipley Glen. I will be going back there again soon to look for Purple Hairstreak butterflies. This Oak has a butterfly on it and I’m going to say it is a Meadow Brown, I think it is too big for a Small Heath and the back edges of the wings are too clean.
If you are using a phone the caption can take up most of the space of the thumbnail so you might find it easier to turn your phone to landscape so it is easier to open the gallery. Hopefully the change in layout has allowed the image size to be relatively larger so that it is easier to click on the image instead of the caption..
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The images are published under the Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA license. Feel free to share them, edit them, but please keep my name in the credits. And if I have got the ID of anything wrong please let me know, I don’t consider myself an expert but I have write something. It is often a best guess and it would take up too much room to say It could be this, or it could be… or perhaps.
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