A superb partial eclipse of the Moon last night, as the lower quarter of the moon was a glowing golden orange whilst the remainder has a faint aura around it. Just magical, as were the tiny glowing green of the Glowworms spotted amongst the grasses. Flying silently past was a Tawny Owl the flat face very obvious as I watched it. The fluttering flight of the Pipistrelle Bats a very different movement.
A walk around the meadows called for this morning by the beautiful song of a Skylark, this bird was a small brown dot high against the blue sky. As I continued another 2 Skylarks emerged from the middle of the field and another was also in song – just fantastic. Swooping along a few Swallows while a flock of 8 Linnets perched in the Hawthorn.
Below fields are a mass of grasses, including the Tall Fescue, Red Fescue, Meadow Barley, Golden Oat Grass, Yorkshire Fog, Cocksfoot, Crested Dog’s Tail and the very delicate Quaking Grass and Sweet Vernal Grass.
Amongst this are scattered the wildflowers of Field and Small Scabious, Greater Knapweed, Black Knapweed, Tufted Vetch and Bush Vetch all a variety of purple while the yellow include Ladies Bedstraw, Rough Hawkbit, Ragwort, Birds-foot Trefoil, Meadow Vetch, Dyer’s Greenweed and Bristly Ox-tongue.
Insects galore as the chirping of Meadow Grasshoppers attracted my attention to the stems, where Field Grasshopper and Stripe-winged Grasshopper were spotted as was Dark Bush-cricket and a fantastic female Great Green Bush-cricket.
Fluttering above was a constant movement of butterflies in Marbled Whites, Meadow Browns and Gatekeepers, while perched basking on the leaves of Lesser Burdock and Field Bindweed were the silvery winged Small Blues.
Flashing in red and black are the Six-spot Burnet moths while looking closely at the plant stems their papery cocoons can be found with the remains of the black body covering poking out where they left it.
A Rabbit family scattered into the Gorse, the numbers of these important grazers has reduced in recent years through in part to diseases, they used to be most important in keeping the grass in check in some places