North Cave Wetlands

During the weekend we headed east to North Cave Wetlands, a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve, where we counted 40+ Peacock along with a couple of Red Admiral nectaring on newly flowering Teasels.

A closer underwing view of the Red Admiral, showing the strong  contrast between the brightly marked forewing and the camouflaged hindwing. Usually it takes a little burst of flash to do justice to the colouring but strong sunshine helped illuminate the wing detail.

All were lovely fresh looking butterflies, with as many as 5 Peacocks per plant.

We saw the majority of Peacocks in this sheltered sunny ditch full of Teasels & Ragwort, bordered by hawthorn hedge,

and this, my first Painted Lady of the year amongst the Teasel.

 

North Cave Wetlands II

I almost forgot about the remaining sightings from our weekend visit to North Cave. The dragonflies were about in good numbers & the small ponds provided great opportunities to observe the insects darting back and forth.

I'd appreciate any feedback on these ID's. This one's definitely a female as the vulvar scale is visible in side profile & I think its a Common Darter.

A male Common Darter (yellow stripes on legs)

Initially I thought these were male Common Hawker, but I think they're more likely Migrant Hawker, due to the yellow triangle on segment two & the reduced antehumeral stripe.

Plenty of Small Tortoiseshell 12+, 6 Speckled Wood along the paths, 5 Large Whites, 1 Small Skipper.

Lots of birds on the lakes & margins, hundreds of noisy & often airborne Lapwing, Curlew, Great Crested Grebe, Little Grebe, Pink Footed Geese, Canada Geese, Goldfinch. Little Brown Job also visited the reserve recently, but unlike Paul we somehow managed to come away without any pics of the birds, too much excitement earlier in the day maybe? Anyway its a good excuse for a return visit methinks.

North Cave Wetlands, Deer

At the weekend we paid a visit to North Cave Wetlands, a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve in the East Riding of Yorkshire. As the name suggests a series of wetland habitats are the dominant features, but it was a wooded path that provided the backdrop to our best sighting of the day. This pair of Roe Deer.


They looked as if they were out for a weekend stroll, chatting about this and that.

We remained still & after a short while the deer the deer spotted us and sought out an alternative route through the hedgerow, bounding off into an adjacent wheat field & into nearby woodland.