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Another warm sunny day with a freshening west wind

Middleton Nature Reserve 

These shots from Rosemary and Peter Silvester from Sunday and yesterday 

Male Common Darter

Female Brown Hawker

Common Bluetail 

Male Black-Tailed Skimmer

Common Blu Damselflies 

Male Emperor

These from Janet today

Female Common Darter

Female Emperor 

Common Blue

South shore (Malcolm)

Announcement - As I was leaving the sea wall this morning an EDF team were erecting a fence across the beginning of the sea wall. When Kevin arrived in the afternoon, he was informed that access to the sea wall will be closed during weekdays till 17:00. This is to allow repairs to the wall which are expected to continue until the end of November.

Mediterranean gull - there were at least 11 on and around the beach by the wooden jetty this morning. There were a number of gulls feeding just out from the harbour mouth. It isn't clear what they were finding to eat, something small, but apparently plentiful.

The German yellow ringed Med turned up to feed on the beach, but they are still only finding Sandmason worms in the shallow water.

An evening check out from the saltmarsh initially didn't look promising, the gulls were disturbed first by a dog walker then two parties of holidaymakers heading for the sea. Fortunately a reasonable sized group of gulls remained including at least 23 Meds. These included a white ringed and two green ringed birds, all of which have been seen earlier this summer. One of the green ringed birds was almost impossible to read as its characters were filled with sand. I had to get really close to sort it out.

R9UJ. Ringed in France 25/06/22, making it a 3rd calendar year

That was as close as I got! I didn't actually spook the Meds and Black-Headed,
it was a group of Common gulls further away that took flight and lifted the others.
You can see a tiny fleck of black remaining in one of the Med's primaries 

There were quite a lot of Common gulls this evening 14 in this shot

Also this morning

Sandwich Tern at least one heard out from the wooden jetty somewhere 

Rock Pipit 1 on Red Nab

Rock Pipit

In the Nature Park

Large White 3

Female Large White

Red Admiral 1

Brimstone 1

Small Skipper 2

Gatekeeper 5

Meadow Brown 3

Comma 2

It always amazes me that this striking butterfly is named after the tiny
comma mark on its underwing 

Comma