All the Fun of the Fair

Week 33 has been one of the best weeks of the year, at work this week the Butterflies etc continued with Common Carpet Moth again and a first in the form of a Silver Y Moth

Silver Y Moth

The usual butterflies continued with Small Copper, Large White, Small White, Green Viened White, Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown, and a few Ringlets. News then broke on Tuesday of a Ruff at Ingbirchworth Reservoir this turned out to be a one day bird hence I missed it. This would have been a very good patch bird with only two being seen since 1996 (2000 and 2003). I did manage to get to Ingbirchworth on the Thursday night adding not 1 not 2 but 3 patch birds to my list these were Greenshank (3), Ringed Plover (2) and Redshank (1) more than made up for the Ruff, in attendance also were Common Sandpiper (1) and Green Sandpiper (2).

Couple of birds I have also managed to catch up with this week in the garden have been Dunnock and Blue Tit

Dunnock

Blue Tit

Then it was off to the Fair at Rutland, we stayed at our usual venue Bridge Cottage (see B & B’s etc Tab) making our first bird stop at the RSPB Top Lodge Fineshade Woods. Not many  bird species about at Fineshade this year we did see however Buzzard, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Chaffinch, Greenfinch, Tree Sparrow and Goldcrest did manage to ID a few species of Dragonfly at the pond Emperor, Brown Hawker  and Common Darter, Butterflies included Speckled Wood,  Red Admiral, Gatekeeper, Small White, Green Viened White, Common Blue and a Large Fritillary probable Silver Washed. We made our way to the cottage seeing plenty of Red Kites on our way to end the first day.

Saturday the 21st was Birdfair day catching up with new things and friends, did buy myself a new book thou called Watching British Dragonflies great book gets good reviews the plates are drawn and not photos of the Dragonflies and it also gives usefull information on loads of sites within the UK to locate various species. My wife got the new pair of binos this year a pair of Opticron 8 x 32 , I found these on the small side for an 8 x 32 binocular but fantastically light good image nice and bright and as soon as thay came out of the box the first bird was an Osprey making its way across the fair. More Red Kites on the way back to the cottage with Kingfisher at the cottage river as we relaxed on the decking perfect ending

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Red Kite

Kingfisher