Clevedon Wildlife

This has been a dreadfully cold spring with recently, added rain and hail but at last I have had a chance to see and photograph some insects. My first dedicated trip was trip Rodborough common in Gloucestershire to look for Duke of Burgundy.   There was just the odd five mins of sunshine and two of these, now rare, butterflies appeared in a sheltered spot. It has been many years since I have seen one in England and I was very pleased to catch up with it again. The other butterfly that I made a special effort for was Wood White. Here again the weather was decidedly changeable and in particular the small site I had been told about seemed to attract heavy cloud despite the sunny hour over lunch (inside for the first time this year) and an entirely sunny drive for an hour to get back home home. During one of the two 30 second breaks in the cloud though, a Wood White fluttered by and I followed it along the path to its roost on a bluebell where it was very happy to let me photograph it....

The very good news was that at least two pairs of lapwings have managed to hatch chicks but the less good news is the survival seems very poor Firstly here's a short video of two of the first brood of three seen on 5th May by others and filmed by me on the 6th  Unfortunately by the 9th May just one was still alive. However a second brood of 4 hatched that day but I was unable to get a picture of them. This pic shows the first brood again I like this next shot just because it includes the other species I am sure is trying to breed here, Redshank. Although not able to get to the site every day I have tried to spend time whenever possible looking for the chicks which have become elusive, to say the least. From my observations it appears that by 10th May we were down to a brood of just 1 and a second brood of just 2. By the 14th I could only find 2 chicks, each near a different adult and since then none at all.  The behaviour of the 3 adults still around gives cause for hope. They...

 Despite the continuing cold weather; migrant birds such as this Wheatear have been passing through. This bird was one of a flock of 6 that stayed a few hours this weekend. It looked like the local swallows had arrived en-masse when 4 one day became 24 the next all on wires along Strode Road, then just as suddenly most of them vanished. Bar-tailed Godwit numbers have decreased but there are still Whimbrel moving through and these use all of the Dowlais fields, not just the scrape showing how important it is to keep as much habitat as possible for them and Curlews as both species are in serious decline. This video was taken from a gate in Strode Road itself when the birds happened to be much closer than normal Today a rarer wader graced the scrape. This was a Little Stint. It is really small as the name suggests and this could be seen when it fed next to a Dunlin and a Ringed Plover at one point. Both of those are small waders themselves. This was an excellent find by Steve from Yat...