7 August 2010
I haven't managed to get out much with the binoculars and LP recently, so probably a good thing that we were in the summer birding lull. But wader passage has started again, so we had a walk round Otmoor between showers this afternoon. Among other stuff, we had a few warblers (Whitethroat, Garden, Reed); a couple of Hobbies and a Red Kite; several Little Egrets and a Grey Heron that posed patiently for CactusD's camera; and we heard probably our last Turtle Dove of the summer.
And waders: five or six Green Sandpipers and (hooray!) my first Black-tailed Godwits of the year, just moulting out of their summer plumage.
The real stars of the day, though, were the butterflies. I'm marginally worse at identifying butterflies than I am at gulls (and believe me, that's saying something :-O), but a handy new ID card and my patient husband helped me put names to Painted Ladies, Red Admirals, a Small Tortoiseshell, Large, Small, and Green-veined Whites, Gatekeepers, Meadow Browns, a Small Copper and many, many Common Blues.
128. Black-tailed Godwit