Saturday 19 August 2017

Painted Lady, Kestrels and Goldfinches at Cranford Park today

Today was very windy and it often felt quite cold. It was also very cloudy with only the odd burst of sunshine. I decided not to do my regular UKBMS butterfly transect today because of the weather, so will do it tomorrow when the wind speeds are predicted to be lower.
 
There were a few butterflies around, but not many were settling enough for a photo call, except for this Red Admiral which not only perched at a reasonable head level, but also let me get quite close up.....
 

 
The high-light of my visit though was stumbling across this beauty.....

 
It's a Painted Lady. My first ever at Cranford Park.
 It's not a patch record though as I know others have seen them there before but it's a big fat patch tick for me.


 

 
The Painted Lady is a migrant butterfly, arriving from north Africa from May onwards. They can breed over here but second flushes don't survive our winter. You can find the Painted Lady in a range of habitats including on buddleia and some garden plants, but they prefer dry, open areas, particularly rough ground with thistles, which is exactly where I found this little lovely.
As I said earlier, this really was the high-light of my day.
 
The juvenile Kestrels are still in the meadow, even though most of the long grasses have been mown (my moan time now - why do the grasses have to be cut mid-August ?? Why cant it be left another couple of weeks ????)
 
Spot the Kestrel below.......
 
 
Now they are getting older the juveniles are spending more time flying and hovering and honing their hunting skills. Instead of perching on the tree guards and looking for prey (usually grasshoppers, crickets and butterflies at the moment) they were hovering then diving down.....


 
The one below landed right above a bench I was sitting on. Not the greatest of photos with all of the twigs in the way, but it was lovely to get a 'falcon stare' from it....

 
It's been a good year for the Goldfinches. There was a decent sized flock of both adults and juveniles in the Headland area.
 
Spot the Goldfinch below....
 
 
They were particularly drawn to all the thistle flower heads that have now gone to seed.
The collective noun for a group of Goldfinch is a 'charm'. Very fitting I reckon....



 
So a short but packed visit to the park.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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