There can be few things better than getting out into the countryside on a fine May day and this is exactly what I did over the weekend. On Sunday I was at Blashford and on Saturday, on something of a busman’s holiday, visiting another Trust reserve at Noar Hill.
Noar Hill is a well known site for arrange of chalkland butterflies, at this time of year this especially means the Duke of Burgundy fritillary. They did not disappoint, with several dozen seen in fine, warm sunshine. Their caterpillars feed on cowslip and it was easy to see what they like about this site as there must be thousands of cowslip plants all over the hill.
Duke of Burgundy fritillary
There were also a fair few other butterflies, including green hairstreak and dingy skipper.
dingy skipper
For a single season we had a small colony of these skippers at Blashford, but they have not been seen since.
The weather was still very warm on Sunday and once again the insects were out in numbers. At last I saw some damselflies, in fact three species, the common blue, large red and blue-tailed. I visited the sandy bank where I saw the solitary bees nests a couple of weeks ago. The same species were there again along with some new ones, one of which was a tiny parasitic species, another nomad bee called the little nomad bee, if I have identified it correctly.
little nomad bee
Elsewhere on the reserve I found a lot of unidentified solitary bees feeding on the flowers of field maple, I had never before realised just how attractive these flowers are to bees.
flowering field maple
Some other trees have long finished flowering and are now in seed, none more obviously so than the willow, which spread seed on the wind making it fall like snow along the path edges.
seeding willow
The last couple of days have seen a few birds of note. On Saturday a sanderling and a little gull were seen on Ibsley Water and today there were four black tern reported there along with a little gull and a turnstone. On Sunday a hobby spent much of the day over the lake and a female marsh harrier flew north up the valley, whilst red kite and raven have been seen everyday recently. Unfortunately I managed to get pictures of none of these, all I can offer is a stock dove snapped in the shadow at the end of the day from the Woodland hide on Sunday.
stock dove on feeder
Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve 