Late March, the first sightings of Butterflies

As usual, the first Butterfly to appear was the Orange Tip, one day you saw one, the next day, a dozen!

After that along came the Peacocks, Speckled Woods and Small Tortoiseshells.
Claylands Nature Reserve, just a 300 meter walk from me, has some very nice ‘wildlife maintained’ meadow, hedge, woodland and a low pasture where damp prevails. All in all a great place for Invertibrates and Reptiles.

The Peacock

Titchfield Canal Buzzards and a Willow Warbler

As Spring gets deeper, the Canal at Titchfield is producing some great wildlife.
Highlight for me was the dark coloured Common Buzzard resting on a tree no more than 40 meters away. After a good 5 minute pose, off it went on another hunt, no doubt to beat the Marsh Harriers to it !

Common Buzzard

Willow Warbler

Further down the Canal Path I saw a couple of Birders who had heard about the Willow Warbler. If not only for the lovely bird I stayed around for a while.
As always for Birders, no sooner had they gone and out it came flitting from small tree to bush to small tree.
The photo doesn’t really do the beautiful yellow pink colour justice.

      
Small Tortoiseshell – Speckled Wood – Greenfinch

I’ve lived down this way for a year now and still not visited everywhere I should. I’ve ventured to the New Forest, Titchfield, Warsash / Hook, the Forest of Bere and Fishlake Meadows, but still not Farlington and around the coast from Lymington to Christchurch. Hopefully soon.

All in all it’s going well, the bird species spotted number is going up by the week and I look forward to a late Spring and Summer of adventures new.