18th Apr 2015: Butterflies

It was a thoroughly pleasurable day to be out for a walk today, despite the cool north easterly breeze. There was nothing too exceptional to be seen but there was so much spring life it was just a joy to be outside.

There were rather disappointingly few birds around the reservoir but the numbers of butterflies out on the wing was great. I saw my first Large White and Orange Tips of the year for here, along with several Peacocks and well over twenty Small Tortoiseshells.

Sedge Warblers were still singing away late morning and I thought I had a quick glimpse of a Garden Warbler but I couldn't be sure.

In the Upper Cherwell Valley a Roe Deer popped out of some scrub very close to me but, typically, as soon as I reached for the camera it saw me and bolted. I found a broken Song Thrush egg which I assume must have been taken by a predator, perhaps a corvid.

Kirsty Brannan had two Common Sandpipers on the Borrow Pit pool earlier in the morning and when I got up there there were now three. They seemed much more settled here than they are around the reservoir and far less flighty. There are four Coots on the pool and one pair are busy collecting nest material, so hopefully they breed successfully here again this year. A group of raptors thermalling high above turned out to be three Buzzard and a Red Kite.