I am playing catch-up with going through my photos. I still have lots to look through from July but this lot are from early August, taken on a visit to Denso Marston Nature Reserve, the Scrape between the reserve and the Buck Lane footbridge. The stars of the show were the good views of Common Blue butterflies in the Scrape, the header image is one of them. I quite like the photos of the Cormorant too.
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DMNR & River Aire
Clearing the weeds (water soldier? Stratiotes aloides?) out of the pond looks like hard work, there’s plenty more in there. I believe that a lot more work has since been done by the volunteers in clearing the pond.
At the back of the pond, in the reeds, I could hear the call of a Chiffchaff “hweet” from a couple of places, I could also see the reeds moving and eventually managed to get a photo of what looks like a recently fledged Chiffchaff looking a bit fluffy still in places.
The wings on the Green Veined White butterfly are looking rather tattered now and unfortunately they are not able to repair or heal them.
I reckon the moth on the Tansy is a Nettle Tap Anthophila fabriciana but that is based on some simple searching and I would be happy to be given a proper ID and some info about what to look at. For the Hoverfly on the Tansy I managed to get some feedback. It is a Cheilosia scutellata female….the yellow tip to the scutellum narrows things down to Cheilosia scutellata, soror or longula, and then the dark antennae and pale forelegs narrow it down further to scutellata.
The wheel of the car in the river shows that the water is very low. I intend to get a few photos of it to show differing levels.
Cormorant
These are of a Cormorant on rocks at the far side of the weir, taken from the Buck Lane footbridge. It looks quite a majestic bird with its wings spread.
The Scrape
These, in addition to the Common Blue are those taken in the scrape and by the Buck Lane Bridge.
We have:-
- Buff Tailed Bumblebee on a Knapweed flower
- Colletes Daviesanus bee on Yarrow
- Colletes Daviesanus bee Tansy
- Hoverfly on Tansy
- Red Soldier Beetle on Yarrow
- Mirid Bug on Tansy. Deraeocoris ruber?
- Nettle Tap moth on Tansy
- 3 views of Peacock butterfly. The 3rd one was taken from the Idle end of the footbridge.
- A Large White butterfly. Large because the dark colouring extends along the wing edge. But I could be wrong, let me know if I am.
- A dull looking Meadow Brown butterfly
- 3 views of a brighter Gatekeeper butterfly
Common Blue butterfly
The scrape is being managed nicely by the volunteers of the Aire Rivers Trust who have scythed the grass several times. The wild flowers in there are encouraging insect life and no doubt hiding quite a few little rodents. The Bird’s Foot Trefoil in particular is a favourite food of the Common Blue caterpillars.
They are tiny butterflies and getting a decent photo of them is rather difficult. I have some others, from other visits, that I am going to be posting at some time.
On the river Aire
These are a few from my return to the entrance of the reserve and a quick look across the river to the rocks. There seems to have been a Black Headed Gull alone, showing off its red bill and legs, on this part of the river, for a while now. Its head is starting to show more grey now as it heads towards a black Summer. Quite often the Grey Heron across the other side of the river will ignore passers-by but this time, this one decided it had enough of me pointing the barrel of my lens at it.
Track
The blue squiggles show where I wandered taking the photos, starting at the pond and finishing back at my car.
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The images are published under the Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA license. Feel free to share them, or even 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 to 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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