Long Days and Short Nights on the Riverside

The end of June 2017 - it seemed like a very long month with endless days - but now the nights are lengthening again. The heatwave ended but the days have remained warm - good conditions for butterflies prevailed - far more have been seen already than last year which was a bad year for most species of mid-summer butterflies.

Today, 30th June started overcast but brightened later, the air was filled with the scent of Meadowsweet.  It was good to see Gatekeeper butterflies now ranging along the banks, taking advantage of the weak sunlight:

A very fresh male Gatekeeper butterfly on Bramble flowers on the river bank today,

 30th June 2017

There were still plenty of Meadow Brown, Ringlets,  Skippers (good numbers of Small Skippers, in a local colony) and Speckled Wood butterflies  with Banded Demoiselle damselflies perched on Nettles and numerous bees and Hoverflies foraging on the scented flowering Meadowsweet. 

A Dragonfly, probably freshly emerged, was seen on the river bank, basking in the warmth:

This is a Common Darter dragonfly (Sympetrum striolatum),

probably an immature female.

 The wings are almost invisible - but are held forward. The dark spots near the end of each wing are just visible.

Day and Night

The days during mid-June were becoming hotter and the nights remaining hot too - it was easy to awaken at 03.45 just as dawn was breaking and hear birdsong. On 20th June,  by 04.00 the Dawn Chorus was well underway - the sky in the east was brightening and it was time to sing! A 'curtain' of song, no one bird dominating - a perfect chorus, blackbirds, song thrushes, wrens,  a few robins and warblers, their song echoing along the river course. By 04.45 cries from overflying gulls could be heard with the first hesitant calls from house sparrows in the eves. By 05.00 the mass chorus had receded, with just a few individual birds taking over from the hundreds.

 A few days earlier, on the evening of Friday 16th, after the breeze had dropped, insects over the river course were being snapped up by numerous swifts - and a song-thrush was singing loudly. The sky was still light in the west at 22.00 when I started a bat survey, but it was completely dark by 23.00.

The bats were easily visible at first - mostly Common Pipistrelle - only just flying from their roosts in the old oaks along the bat flyway, whizzing very low,  just clearing my head. Most bats were detected along the river course, as this is where they find the most insects. There were large numbers, including Soprano Pipistrelle with some Serotines - and a few Daubentons bats low over the water. The sky remained clear but it soon became completely dark under the trees. The song thrush had stopped singing - and the bats were invisible - but using the bat detector, very audible, echolocating.