Saturday 18 June 2011

A little taste of summer

Little gulls have been the main story this week - pretty easy to find either on South Marsh East or D res. Michael Flowers popped in yesterday and managed to get them plus a few more seasonal favourites for his blog including the first marbled white of the year.

Hobby put in a brief appearance yesterday, but the biggest rarity was the reserve's possibly only fifth ever lime hawkmoth:

Picture courtesy of Martin - more on his blog. Rarer than any of our recent avian rarities! On setting up the moth trap the night before this attractive orb web spider Araniella cucurbitina (Thanks Doug!) was creeping about:


John Coish sent across these pictures of some of the North Marsh inhabitants - little grebe family usually outside the hide:

Sedge warbler:

Reed warbler:

And the marsh frogs of North Lagoon which have been assisting with renovation works:

Alan Walkington sent us a picture of one of the reserve barn owls - interestingly unringed so unlikely to be one of our original birds - movement from the bad winter?:

Likewise Tony McLean has also been working on another pair nearby - more pics on his Flickr stream. Once again just a reminder of Tony's display as part of Driffield Photographic Society's exhibition at the Triton Gallery, Sledmere starting tomorrow and running til Saturday (with the exception of Monday).