Red Letter Day

A red letter day is one of those days highlighted in red on the calendar, from the medieval practice of colouring saints days in red.

Today, despite the very strong north easterly wind, I embarked on my weekly butterfly transect.  I expected a few stray species not a bumper crop.

Beginning at the Bush Inn at Crosstown, I quickly notched up 5 Small Whites.

Small White

And so it continued through each of the ten sections with butterflies on each of them.

All week I have been noting many Large and Small Whites as well as Red Admirals so was expecting to see some of them.

Red Admiral

I was totally unprepared for the sheer numbers.  I recorded 40 Small and 14 Large whites but what made a real RED letter day was the 51 Red Admirals seen on 9 of the 10 sections.

Small Coppers and Small Tortoiseshells as well as the almost mandatory Speckled Wood and two rather late tattered Silver-washed Fritillaries made up the rest of the list. It was the second largest total of butterflies I have recorded this year.

Small Copper

For a September transect, I counted an unusually large total of 143 butterflies of 7 species.

To top it all off, deep in the woods on Bracken was an unusual sightiing for this area, a Hawthorn Shieldbug.

Hawthorn Shieldbug

Truly a butterfly transect to note on the calendar in red.

Blogs I follow

https://downgatebatman.blogspot.com/

https://maryatkinsonwildonline.blogspot.com/

Living in a Zoo - Mammals

 These last few weeks we have seen more mammals that usual.  I wonder if it is dispersal time and we are seeing youngsters seeking their own territories.

The blog was prompted by the sighting of a Stoat on our garden.  We have seen one before usually once year.  My records show one in March 2016 and again in September 2017.  This one appeared this last week on 27th August.  It was doing what they always do, snaking in and out of the stones in our wall; no doubt following the routes that our resident Bank Vole takes. 

Stoat

Bank Voles are resident in our garden wall.  I have records from 2014 up to the present. They appear almost every day traversing the route along the back fence, before emerging from the right hand wall, dashing across the gap and into the other wall.  Here they appear between the stones and head into the undergrowth before returning a few minutes later. 

Bank Vole

I know there are Hedgehogs in the garden, they leave little present of their dropping here and there.  My records show them from 2014 mainly in Summer and Autumn.  I left a part of the lawn to grow and noticed hedgehog sized tracks through the long grass which my trail camera confirmed were hedgehog trails. 

Hedgehog

An unwelcome visitor since this year has been a regular sighting of a Brown Rat.  It appears to follow a route between our fence and hedgerow before heading into next door’s garden.  Our neighbour very kindly puts down food to attract hedgehogs, but the rats have noticed and make regular calls to check for free food.

Brown Rat

We have had the odd sighting of a Red Fox in the field beyond our fence.  Two wonderful sightings were made in July when a young fox visited on the 23^rd and again on the 29^th.  Earlier sightings were of an old mangy fox, this youngster can visit any time.

Red Fox

Since 2015, I have recorded the occasional Grey Squirrels looking longingly at the bird feeds, a newly acquired ground feeder was found in June by a squirrel.  It came day after day to gorge on any peanuts in the feeder but we had to remove it when the rat appeared. 

Grey Squirrel

Bats are quite common around our house.  Once shortly after we moved in 20 years ago, we called on the services of the North Devon Bat Group who recorded over 90 Pipistrelles emerging from our loft.  We do see them on warm nights and assume that they are Pippistrelles but until we found and photographed a dead one on our drive we could never be sure.

Pippistrelle

There are quite a few pet cats about and they catch quite a lot of vertebrates and leave their prey for us to find.  

Common Shrew

Common Shrews are frequently seen as cat kills on our driveway

Although we can’t condone this and do chase cats from our garden, there have been two remarkable sightings that we might not have had otherwise.  Many years ago, I photographed a very blurred picture of what I suspected was a Water ShrewIn July, we came across a cat kill which is undoubtedly the real thing.

Water Shrew

Later on in August, the other extraordinary kill was a Dormouse.  

Hazel Dormouse

It was dead on the road and had obviously been hit by a car, but to be on the road it had probably been caught by a cat and then left there.