Being in the right place at the right time

Having woken early I sealed my moth trap from an over indulging Blackbird as dawn broke and noticed the sky’s were clearing from the west. Unfortunately not in time to see the conjunction between Jupiter and a waning crescent moon so don’t know if it was a full or a grazing occultation of the planet but it looked fantastic seeing them so close with a bright Venus shining below, a magical threesome.

With the hope that the weatherman was on the ball with some decent sunshine we visited Oversely Wood locating 10 species of butterfly with 21 Silver-washed Fritillary, 7 Purple Hairstreak and 3 White Admiral taking the plaudits but alas despite many others looking there were no Purple Emperors reported while we were present. A number of the usual woodland bird’s species seen plus Roe Deer, Muntjac Deer and a Silver Y moth. The crowning glory of the morning was meeting up with Mark who I had not seen for 17 years so tried catching up with each others news in 30 minutes, God – we go back to 1980 when we met on holiday in the Isle of Scilly with the late David Hunt.

Left Oversely for a walk along the near by swollen River Avon adding 3 more butterfly species to our day list but the cloud cover arrived and the wind freshened so did not do well on Dragonflies apart from scores of Banded Demoiselle among the river side vegetation, Kingfisher, Common Tern and Sedge Warbler noted.