Between the rain today, Saturday 7 June 2025, I went along to Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits Local Nature Reserve with my camera. Whenever I go there, as I do at Denso Marston Nature Reserve, I keep half an eye on the river looking for Otter. No such luck yet.
The header image is of a Little Egret seen on the other side of the river, sticking its nose in its own armpit.
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Fur and Feather
One reason for specialising in one particular area of nature is that when you are looking for it you it can make it difficult to see other things because they see you first. Looking at the plants, butterflies and insects a shape would move and go out of view. Today those shapes turned out to be Pheasant chicks and Rabbits. So I decided to switch to looking for them, and had some success.
The Grey Heron, Sand Martin and Little Egret were a little easier to spot. The Heron squawked as it flew over and the Little Egret was too busy catching tiny fish and scratching its wingpit/armpit. Several of the Drake Mallard around are now looking as though they are changing colours, are they already going into eclipse?
Plants
A lot of effort has gone into cataloguing the plants at Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits and there is a wide variety. These are just a few that were showing themselves.
Another plant that was growing was the Teasel. The area near the entrance still has a lot of last year’s Teasels and this year’s are growing strong. Sorry, no photo.
Fluttery Things
Fluttery things and creepy things and buzzy things. Probably due to the rain and lack of warming sun I didn’t see many Damselflies, just a couple of Azure Blues.
The black Aphids were packed nice and tight which I guess makes it easy for the couple of ants that can be seen to milk them.
The flies were very keen on getting to something on the ground. They were several deep. When I moved closer they all flew away to reveal what they had been interested in, and I wish they hadn’t, it looked very squishy and rotten. It was not a dead animal but looked very unpleasant, just the sort of thing to attract flies.
The Meadow Brown is the first I have seen this year and has a big chunk missing from its right wing. The Speckled Wood, on the other hand, looked quite fresh.
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