Finally some butterflies!

On Sunday 3oth March, I had a look around St. Bartholomew's Churchyard at Corton and heard 2 Chiff- Chaffs and saw 1 in the north bushes. Whilst there I saw a Coal Tit carrying nest material in its bill, it flew towards towards the Church. I walked over to Corton OSW, where I heard 2 Chiff- Chaffs and saw one in the trees walking down to the complex. At the static carvan park northern edge I saw a butterfly fly up and on further investigation it proved to be a very wary Peacock butterfly. Only my second butterfly see this year, I was getting concerned as I had seen very few so far. Back around the OSW complex and southern edge by the Tamarisk bushes, 2 butterflies were flying with each other, 1 a Peacock butterfly, the other a fine Comma butterfly that kept alighting on the path, eventually I managed to creep up and with my 180mm macro lens get a few reasonable pics. Finally a Large White butterfly flew by. I then checked Ness Point, Hamilton Road, and the Net posts and the only birds of note seen was a Kittiwake flying north over the sea and 3 Linnets at the Netposts, sadly the northerly winds has seemed to have stopped any further bird migration.

Garden visitors

On Saturday 29th March, I saw a hovering Dark-bordered Bee Fly which settled on the ground in our back garden near our conservatory and I managed to get a pic, I also noticed Whitby our black cat look up at something in the south- west corner of the back garden flitting around in our Apple tree and it was a fine Chiff- Chaff, he didn't chase after it & alerted me to its presence, so thanks Whitby.

Oval birding

Directly after work, on Wednesday 26th March, I just had time to check out the Oval and part of the North Denes, at the Oval, I was dismayed to see a further rectangular area of grass is being converted into a practice court by the north- east corner. Around half way along the northern wall, a lovely ashy-grey female Black Redstart flew into the practice part perched on the fence and then flew over to the rollers, meanwhile by the north-east corner a fine male Black Redstart flew in and settled on the grass, it also flew to the rollers area. As I walked over to the rollers, a fine female Wheatear flew up at 5.45pm and perched on a nearby rail.

Redwings heading back to Scandinavia

This evening, on Tuesday 25th March, as I went out into the front garden at 8.15pm and then 8.50pm, I heared a total of 8 low flying Redwings calling "pssst" in total flying north east heading back to Scandinavia for the spring.

Gunton Beach LEO

On Tuesday 25th March at about 4.10pm I received a call from Nick B who had just found what he suspected was a LEO on Gunton Warren, I met him at 5.20pm after work at Link's Road together with Rob H they had just seen the Owl again and it had been confirmed as a LEO as originally suspected. Rob said the bird had flown from Warren House Wood copse to the the smaller stand of Holm Oaks further north, Rob had to leave but I followed Nick on the path slowly winding upwards along the bank heading north. As we walked up the path, I saw the fantastic Long- eared Owl, a dark long- winged Owl, fly to the south- east edge of the Holm Oak copse and then disappear within the foliage and then a short 10 seconds later I saw it fly northwards over the copse for a few seconds where it dipped down and lost to view. This would be about 5.30pm. It wasn't seen again until Chris D saw it fly from scrub just north of the copse at 6.57pm (which totally tallies where I last saw it flying too). I also saw Andrew E, Rene B. and Chris D.

Garden Chiff- Chaff (thanks Whitby!)

On Monday 24th March, directly after work at about 5.40pm, thanks to Whitby, our lovely black cat who looked up at (but didn't go after) a Chiff- Chaff, alerted me to the fact there was something of interest, the aforementioned Chiff-Chaff, in the south- west corner of the garden feeding in a bush in the corner for a couple of minutes before it flew west.

Corton Wagtails & Muntjac

After the net Posts I had decided to check out Corton in the hope of finding my own White Wags in the field just south of the OSW, I met Rob Wil, who said there was a flock of 11 Wagtails with at least 2 White wagtails. My hunch had been proved correct, scanning Rob and I saw 2 fine smart adult male White wagtails, with typical pale grey backsharply demarcated black cap, and white flanks (not grey smudged) after Rob had left I also saw a female White Wagtail (black cap merged into pale grey back and again white flanks (no grey smudging) and a third adult male White Wagtail, totalling 4 White Wagtails in all, the flock had grown to 13! Walking back to the Churchyard, some tinkling 3 Goldfinches, with one of their number briefly posing for the camera, as did a female Muntjac Deer nonchalantly feeding in the north- east corner of the churchyard which enabhled me to get more Muntjac pics and finally in the north- west corner of the churchyard I heard and then saw a Chiff-Chaff singing and moving through the top of a tree in the hedgerow. [The pic of the Male Muntjac was taken at the Lowestoft Net Posts Bramble patch earlier in the day, I couldn't fit it onto the previous post!]