Time to start looking for butterflies up the Welcombe

If the sun keeps shining this weekend it will be a good time to go out onto the Welcombe Hills and look for butterflies. Over the last few days I've seen the magnificent Peacock, the yellow Brimstone, Small Tortoiseshell and the beautiful Orange Tip.

I've also been out today looking for Orange Tip butterfly eggs. Here a pic taken this afternoon. As you can see the egg is minute. In close-up you can see that it's a beautiful conical shaped object with fluted sides. With luck this egg will become a caterpillar, then it will pupate, drop into the ground below and with even more luck, emerge next spring as another Orange Tip butterfly for the cycle to start all over again. 

Orange Tip egg Welcombe Hills May 2016

Close-up Orange Tip egg Welcombe Hills May 2016

Orange Tips are busy butterflies and seldom seem to stay still. They are searching for mates and for their favoured plant to lay eggs on,  the Lady's Smock. Look out for the Orange Tips flitting along the edges of fields and hedges just a foot or so above the ground. The male has the orange tips and the female black tips to the wings. Both have the distinctive green mottled pattern on the underside of the wings. If you find Lady's Smock (clue: it prefers damp places so the bottom of the slope from the reservoir towards the hotel is good), gently examine the flower heads and you may be able to see the orange coloured egg. Only one egg is laid per plant and if more than one is laid by different females, only one caterpillar will survive to pupate. That's because they eat competitors - though this may be for moisture rather than simple competition.

The Tortoiseshell and the Peacock like to bathe in the sun. Often they will find a patch of bare ground where presumably they benefit from the warmth of the ground below and from the sun above.

The Brimstone is a truly beautiful butterfly and a distinctive yellow (brimstone being the ancient name for sulphur which is yellow of course). It also has a distinctive shape rather more exotic than most of our native butterflies.

The Common Blue will be emerging around this time. Last night sitting on the benches at the top of Rowley Fields I'm sure I glimpsed one but it flew off behind me into the wood and I lost sight of it.

Brimstone butterfly (MA 2015) 

Peacock (MA 2015)

Orange Tip (MA 2015)

Small Tortoiseshell (MA 2015)

Some further thoughts about Nuthatches and bird sounds

I posted about Nuthatches the other day having come across some in Clopton Park and being lucky enough to take some snaps. Idling away at the computer this morning I thought some might like to know of some resources that could be useful to find out more about our birdlife and can help locate them.

A good website is the British Trust for Ornithology. There are many sites providing information about birds but the BTO has 'unbiased information about birds' and undertakes research. For example, the tracking of Cuckoo Stanley has attracted nationwide interest after  it was found where cuckoos go for the winter. Stanley returned to the uk in early April from the Ivory Coast.

I went to the information about the Nuthatch and followed a link to recordings of its songs, calls, male calls, alarm calls and so on.

This was really useful to me . I hadn't really understood the range of sounds each bird makes and when I go for the walk this morning I'll be much more confident of locating the Nuthatches from their sounds.

I'm keen to get a decent picture of a Treecreeper. It's a small bird, moves quickly but has a distinctive song so I'm more confident now of finding one. That doesn't mean I will actually see one of course. Here's some not so good pictures of one I took a while ago.

I saw a Nuthatch

Nuthatch - Clopton Park April16

Nuthatch - Clopton Park April16

Nuthatch - Clopton Park April16

One of the places I'm often drawn to when walking up the Welcombe is in Clopton Park where the two old oak trees stand down and to the seasonal pond, the magnificent hornbeams and the ash trees that seem to be all decaying.

Those ash trees in various stages of degeneration provide a great habitat for green and spotted woodpeckers, jackdaws and crows. These birds nest in the many holes the ash provides and the spotted woodpeckers can be heard tapping the branches for grubs.

Anticipating a change in the weather we decided to take our walk as usual and found our way to the swimming pool where the run off from the hills was too much for the pool and had overflowed forming mini lakes and a healthy stream across and down towards Margaret's Well, joining the ditch there.

Nuthatch - Clopton Park April16

We followed the water flow up towards the hornbeams and stopped to enjoy the lace-like veil of catkins covering them. Looking up I saw this Nuthatch on the trunk of an old ash tree. The Tree Creeper is a quite common bird here but this is the first time I've seen the Nuthatch. The Tree Creeper is smaller, brown and white and favours moving up the trunk to search for food. It is unable to go down head first so hops backwards to achieve that.  In contrast the Nuthatch has a beautiful orange-red breast, is larger and moves both up and down the trunk head first.

A good spot you'll agree and the bird kindly paused long enough for me to fumble around getting my camera out and snapping a few pics.

I saw early flowering grass - the Field Wood-rush

Field Wood-rush - Luzula campestris

As this morning's sleet/snow gives way to more rain I'm reminded that of all the months, April can be relied on for the most varied and unpredictable for weather. Looking back, I've pictures from 6th April 2008 when we had proper snow. That brought out the toboggans, skis, plastic sheets and even bathtubs (really!) as Stratford's young raided their parents' garages for something to slide on.

In our garden the blackbirds have been feeding young in their nests for quite a while now. So, even though snowfall decorates the landscape and brings great enjoyment, I can't help but feel for the birds who will have yet another problem to deal with in rearing their young.

Clopton Field April 2008

Spring is well underway and the start of many a life cycle, not just for the birds but for our plants too. One of the first grasses to flower is the Field wood-rush. It's a common enough plant but easily overlooked due to its small size. The delicate flowers are in clusters and pale yellow. My picture shows it amongst the Cowslips I wrote about last week. Like some other small plants their beauty is not easily accessible but once you 'get your eye in' as they say these can enhance the pleasures of walking in the Welcombe Hills. 

Cowslips, celandines, violets as the sun sometimes shines

There's an area of the Welcombe Hills at the bottom of the opening leading down from the reservoir area toward the Welcombe Hotel. On one side is a sloping wooded area of predominantly hawthorn but with lime and two old beech trees. On the other side is Nursery Cover and between the two lies a fallen horse chestnut tree.

April 10th 2016

In the spring and summer the morning sun warms this area. Many of my butterfly and bee pictures are taken here (for example here) on the Woolly Thistles, blackberry bushes and the margins of the woods where the Lady's Smock thrive in the damp clay.

Violet in Nursery Cover April16

Nursery cover gently slopes down here. In the spring the leafless spindly Ash, crab apple and the few hawthorn allow the sunlight to penetrate to the ground layer and if anyone cares to walk this way you will find amongst the damp moss a wonderful display of bright yellow lesser celandine and violets of all shades from deep blue to white. 

Celandine, Nursery Cover April16

It seems wrong to walk over these but they do survive so I suggest a closer look. Stand still and you may hear a bumble bee queen looking for a nesting place in the ground. Follow the sound and you may see her on her quest. 

Nursery Cover, April 16

Look more carefully and you may treated by finding the  fungus I pictured below that grows here. It's not a true morel (Morchella) so don't get too excited. It won't harm you but is tasteless.

Mitrophora semilibera, April 16

Elsewhere the first Cowslips are flowering! These were catching that morning sun on a bank behind the seats at the top of Nursery Cover that look out over towards the Monument and Edge Hill beyond.

First Cowslips of the year, Welcombe Hills April 2016

Cowsliips, April 16

I saw some deer prints and thought about fun things to do this Easter up the Welcombe

I've had a few conversations recently whilst walking up the Welcombe Hills. Usually they start with the weather: 'isn't it cold?', 'isn't it lovely?', 'what's the forecast for tomorrow?' Sometimes  it's topical subjects that start with, 'when will the cattle arrive?'.

Some of us have been discussing the absence of rabbits up the Welcombe. This time of year usually sees the little bunnies out and the older ones venturing further from cover to get to  the best new growth. At first light and at dusk there are usually dozens of rabbits grazing.

Not this year it seems. Elsewhere the rabbit population seems to be good so we are wondering what has caused the fall in this one area. 

There do seem to be lots of deer about though. One friend saw fallow deer around the badger sets in the woods a couple of weeks ago and I've see the solitary muntjac breaking cover several times. Further proof is the hoof prints left by the deer. These are easy to spot, even amongst the many dog paw prints.

Here's a fun thing to do if you are up the Welcombe over the coming weeks. Try out your tracking skills. This is easy and good fun for children. Firstly help them to find deer prints so they know what they look like and then follow them and see how far they can be tracked. 

Places to look are in the woods down from the reservoir area and along paths. The pictures below that I took the other day should be enough to get you started.

 As you can see the deer leaves a distinctive print from its hooves. The smallest ones are likely to be muntjac and the larger ones probably fallow deer.

Children should find this fun especially a the prints often go around in circles and get lost on harder ground and more difficult to trace in the grass.

There are a lot of dog paw prints which you can see in the picture to the right. Note the 4 pads and marks left by the nails.

For more advanced trackers why not look out for badger prints? They are there to be found in the woods. One good place to look is in Clopton Field side by the two large oak trees. There is a track going down from the badger set past the oaks and down to the pond. Look carefully and you might get lucky.


Badger prints are distinguished by 5 pads of the toes and claw marks. Here's one I took the other day. More information is easy to get from the internet i.e. here. My pic seems to show just 4 toes but there is another (pinky?) lost in the slushy mud.

I saw a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly in Clopton Field

The weather pendulum tends to swing widely back and forth between extremes at this time of year. When it's overcast, wet or the northerly wind snaps at your ears and nose it's head down on the walks up the Welcombe Hills for some spoon carving, looking up only to check for obstacles. It seemed as if these days would never end. 

Yesterday the pendulum swung the other way and in the shelter of the Clopton Park side of the hills the heat from the sun encouraged many a walker to unzip top and remove hat.  As I ambled along the very top of the field parallel to the bridle path I looked up from my whittling to enjoy the bright, warm light. That very same light and warmth brought a beautiful Small Tortoiseshell butterfly to life and it lay on the bare soil, wings extended absorbing the heat. This butterfly would have been from the second brood of last year. These are the first to reappear having hibernated all winter. You may have found these in your shed or greenhouse. It may be this one had found a sheltered place in a hollow tree.

When I prepared to go out yesterday I toyed with the idea of bringing the camera with me in anticipation of what the seasonal change might bring. Below is a picture of a Small Tortoiseshell from last year and I will be with camera from now on.