Stay at home success

Elegant Tern at Pagham Harbour? Red-footed Falcon at Frensham Common? Squacco Heron at Dungeness? Nah... why not be perverse and stay local, you never know what you might find. And find I did - maybe not headline grabbing birds like those above, but species that got my juices flowing...

Scarlet Pimpernel (blue form and maybe the ssp foemina)
This is a 'normal' blue form, overlapping 'full' petals, shortish sepals
Putative foemina, showing petals that do not overlap, are not as 'full', with seemingly longer sepals


ssp foemina is meant to be smaller and slighter - these do look it to me compared to the red Pimpernels
I have posted these images on a couple of botanical Facebook groups and emailed my trusted Surrey botanical contacts, but so far nobody has commented. Feel free to do so if you have any thoughts! Seen on farmland at Langley Vale, Surrey.

Yellow-legged Clearwing
The lawn was mowed, the sun was out and I thought "Why not put a pheromone lure out while I have a cup of tea?" I have hung up the VES lure on quite a few occasions in the back garden and recorded absolutely nothing, but today, after five minutes, this came along!


A male Yellow-legged Clearwing, due to its black, and not yellow, tail fan
My clearwing list is coming along nicely, with Hornet, Lunar Hornet, Red-tipped, Orange-tailed, Red-belted, Currant and Six-belted now being joined by Yellow-legged. Apart from the first two species mentioned, all have been recorded at a lure.

So there you go, you don't need to twitch to see the goodies, although my stagnant UK bird life list might disagree with me.

Comments

Derek Faulkner said…
Wow, I didn't know that there was a blue form of Scarlet Pimpernel, it looks great.
14 June 2017 at 05:10
Steve Gale said…
Derek, it is an intense blue that you can see a mile off
15 June 2017 at 09:46
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