I had my first walk around part of Dalton Bank Nature Reserve on Monday. I had driven past its small entrance on several occasions but this time I had some spare time, and had my camera with me. I had no idea what was in there but did know that is was sloping up from the road and there were a lot of trees in the area. I have since had a look at a satellite view of the place. It is a decent size and I will have to go back to explore some more. As part of this trip out I also had some decent views of Emley Moor transmitter with its temporary and flimsy looking partner. I intend to get some more photos of Emley Moor tower but the circumstances have yet to present themselves.
As usual please click on the photos to see a better quality image. Where there is more than one image in the set you can look through each of them by using the arrows. This also gives you a bit of information about the camera settings.
Purple Hairstreak
When I got up the first major slope of the reserve to the open grassed area I spent some time watching the butterflies. There were quite a few Oak trees and because of the slope the grassed area was a great place to look at the upper parts of them. I spent a while looking at the tops of the Oak trees and eventually spotted a small butterfly flying. Even though I thought I had seen where it landed it still took some spotting but I did manage a slightly fuzzy photo of a Purple Hairstreak.
Comma 
Gatekeeper 
Meadow Brown
The other butterflies were much easier to spot but still not easy to take a photo of. Are they quantum creatures – there until you try to get a good look at them.
Chiffchaff
The photo of the Chiffchaff was taken from the parking area a couple of minutes before I left. I had heard plenty of them around and saw them flying from one patch of Brambles to another but they were always tucked well in until this one flitted about a Gorse bush and was visible for a second. Its head and body look a bit scruffy so it looks like a recent fledgling, but the length of its tail ? does that say otherwise? It could be an adult that is just too busy feeding young that it has not had chance to smarten itself up.
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