Clevedon Wildlife

The weather was warm to hot this week so again I concentrated on insects. Admittedly a couple of days were mostly dragonfly searching but in the absence of any particularly interesting sightings I will stick with butterflies. A comma from last week was the first of an obvious hatch On Wednesday my car was booked in for a service in a North Bristol garage, so I took the opportunity to avail myself of the offered courtesy car and spend a morning in Lower Woods reserve near Badminton. The shade was very welcome as the mercury hit 29 degrees C by lunchtime. Such heat meant that butterflies were very active and thus hard to snap but perseverance paid off with the two species I most wanted to see First a couple of White Admirals were present, though they stayed a bit high even when perched Next were Silver-washed Fritillaries. I was despairing of ever seeing one land when I met a fellow naturalist called Rod Holbrook whose work I had seen on twitter. He had only gone a...

Last week's discovery of a Scarce Chaser in the Gordano Valley turned my thinking  towards other species that I have rarely seen and in particular the Common Clubtail. Several attempts long ago in stretches of the Severn and also parts of Surrey had only ever resulted in a single distant sighting. While this was OK for my then target of seeing all the British breeding species I would love to see more, and also to get photographs. Armed with a site near Tewkesbury recommended by a friend I set off Saturday morning with high hopes. Once there I met up with Jason, a local dragonfly watcher who had the same idea in mind. Unfortunately, several hours searching failed to deliver and we both had things to return South for. The morning was not wasted though with many Scarce Chasers tame enough to get decent pics of and a range of damselflies including a white-legged which we don't get on our patch. Scarce Chaser males Scarse Chaser female Azure damselfly ...

While I have tried to be upbeat throughout this blog, there is no getting away from the fact that both lapwings and redshanks appear to have failed to fledge successfully again this year. While not the whole story I suspect that a lack of water management may. be an important factor These pictures really illustrate this better than any words of mine. Between December and March we endured the wettest winter for some time and I started the year with very high hopes. Mid December 2019 The situation in March was particularly promising, Views from the side track and then the corner looking across from the seawall. This corner view was then used to take pictures at regular intervals with my phone resting on the same fencepost each time 16th March below 31st March 16th April you can see the individual rhynes showing up 12th May  not long now till the chicks hatch ! 26th May chicks need access to plenty of wet insect filled areas no...

Thanks to Aravind Ramesh  who found this Collared Pratincole on Severnside  there was an exciting local trip to be had. Joan and I waited for a few days in the expectation that numbers of people would be low and then went up. It was an unusual twitch as people sat or stood in twos spread along the river bank path but well worth it as I had only ever seen one in Britain before. What was even better though was to catch up with a couple of friends that we had not seen since the start of lockdown. The bird flew several times for 20 to 30 mins at a time but never came particularly close. I did not fancy going up a narrower path to get closer either. So these are my best efforts. Emboldened by this we had a morning on the levels seeing the usual species and enjoying the peace of this area Coming from Scotland Joan misses the sound of cuckoos here so it was great to hear and see a few Many sunny hours in the garden lead to a few excellent dragonfly sighti...