Howdy, partners! Setting out across the ranch this morning, I brought my lasso and best stirrups to round up a few of the Hereford Cattle for the Swanage Carnival procession later today. Pride of place, atop our float, sits a Bottlenose Dolphin. Saddle up, cowboys and cowgirls, it’s going to be one heck of a ride!
You’d actually be not hard pressed to mistake Durlston for the setting of some western film with the grasslands baked dry over the course of the heatwave, which is set to continue into next week. Though for this morning at least, we’re under a welcome layer of cloud.
A Raven’s croak draws my eyes up towards it and up into the crown of the towering Monterey Cypress. Here I start to notice the movements of all the little birds moving between its branches; a family of 8 or so Long-tailed Tits, a couple tiny Goldcrests, Great Tit, and Chaffinch.
At the top of the woods, a clearing offers a beautiful assortment of flowers; towering pink Hemp Agrimony, Willowherb and Creeping Thistle, alongside the taller yellows; Ragwort and Bristly Ox-tongue, and an understorey of Fleabane.
Yesterday this patch offered respite to an influx of Painted Lady butterflies - I counted 28 as I passed and another 20 or so on the Buddleia outside the office window. We often count about 100 of these migrants each year; excepting a massive influx in 1996 which saw 2500 recorded, with 1000 of those counted in just one day!
I continue to the cliffs following the dusty path lined with the low-growing Common Restharrow, and a Common Carder Bee burying its nose into a Dwarf Thistle.
I’m pleased to see a Greater Black-backed Gull and a Gannet, the latter supposedly flying over from the Channel Islands to feed off our coast. But then I’m quickly distracted by a Peregrine Falcon diving for a Woodpigeon at great speed. The predator misses by quite a distance, perhaps one of the juveniles still learning to hunt.