Local Wildlife Sightings, August 2025

 After a changeable first week, in which there was some (but not enough) rain, the weather settled into another spell of very warm or hot weather, with the fourth 'heatwave' of the year arriving from the 11th - at least in the Royston area. On Therfield Heath, Chalkhill Blue numbers peaked at the beginning of the month, before a gradual (or rapid, in the case of Gatekeepers) decline of these and most other species set in. The exceptions were Small Heath, with the appearance of another generation, and Adonis Blues, first reported at the end of July, which were present at both ends of The Heath by the 9th. There was a welcome increase in numbers of these in the second week of August, with a few males being seen away from the colonies on the Old Rifle Range and Church Hill. There has been a small influx of Clouded Yellows from Europe this month. Some were reported on The Heath on the 10th and a single butterfly flew north past me, on the Old Rifle Range, on the 11th.

Male Adonis Blue, Therfield Heath, 11 August

Female Common Blues with varying amounts of blue on the upper wings were seen in the fields near my house. I tried to photograph them all, but unfortunately missed out on the most spectacular one, with wings almost completely covered in a shade of violet. I did a little more photography of blues roosting in the evening light, but by the end of the first week of the month they were becoming increasingly tatty.

Male Common Blue (left) and Chalkhill Blue, Therfield Heath, 7 August

Blue Variant of a Female Common Blue, Royston, 8 August

Whilst butterflies have had a much better year, I have seen very few day flying moths on The Heath or night flying moths coming in to the bathroom this year. Maybe they have been hit harder by last year's poor weather. I can't remember seeing any 'Silver Y' moths (normally the commonest day flying moth hereabouts) at all, although other factors may be at work here, as this species is migratory. Two moths that I have seen regularly are Hummingbird Hawkmoth (one even got into my greenhouse - not too difficult as it has one or two broken panes of glass) and Jersey Tiger Moth, which goes from strength to strength, having only arrived in the Royston area a few years ago.

I start spending more time looking up (for birds) rather than looking down (for insects) in August. Waders are migrating across the country in August and Dernford Farm Reservoir, just across the border in Cambridgeshire, has plenty of mud available for them in the current near drought conditions. I visited on the 11th, looking for Ruddy Shelducks that had been reported there on the previous day. There was no sign of the Shelducks, but I did see six Black-tailed Godwits and a juvenile Spotted Redshank on the mud there. A male Ferruginous Duck (unfortunately an 'escape', so I can't list it) was also present (image)

Male Ferruginous Duck, Dernford Farm Reservoir, 11 August

Spotted Redshank, Dernford Farm Reservoir, 11 August

Closer to home, I flushed three Grey Partridges on The Heath on the 14th. One was much smaller than the others: it must have been a juvenile as juvenile game birds learn to fly well before they are full grown, in order to escape their many ground (and avian?) predators.

High pressure continued to dominate the weather in the third week of August, but, with the wind coming from the north and east, Royston was plagued with lots of low cloud and much cooler temperatures. Insects became much less active under the cloud, although I was lucky to be out on Church Hill when the sun came out for an hour or so in the late afternoon of the 19th, and I was able to photograph male and female Adonis Blues there, as well as a Hummingbird Hawkmoth that seems to have been present in Fox Covert for several weeks. The best photo that I could manage of the hawkmoth is shown below. Around 20-25 Adonis Blues were flying on Church Hill, including 'fresh' females. It may not be true elsewhere, but in this colony many of the females have some blue markings on their backs and upper wings (see example below), which I don't see on the otherwise very similar Chalk Hill Blue females. In addition, the spots on the lower wings are bolder than those on female Chalk Hill Blues. After a very poor 2024, it is good to see numbers of Adonis Blues recovering this summer, even though numbers are still well below where they were in the years after they had first been introduced.

Female Adonis Blue, Church Hill, 19 August. Note the Blue Efflorescence on the Body and Wings

Male Adonis Blue, Church Hill, 19 August

Record Shot of Hummingbird Hawkmoth, Fox Covert, 19 August

The dry weather has resulted in the water levels in lakes and reservoirs falling, resulting in lots of muddy margins - ideal for waders on passage. During the duller days I visited Amwell, the Tring Reservoirs, Dernford Farm Reservoir (which, by the time I visited on the 21st, was almost dry) and Kings Meads, where a juvenile Spotted Redshank had been discovered a couple of days beforehand. Other waders seen at these sites were Ruff (four at Dernford Farm Reservoir on the 21st), Green Sandpipers, Common Sandpipers (lots) and a Common Redshank. At Wilstone Reservoir, where there is very limited access due to long term engineering works, a couple of Hobbies flew over and at Startops End a colourful Mallard (?) hybrid and a Black Swan were seen. Lots of hirundines, including my first (!) Hertfordshire Sand Martin of the year were flying over the water here.

Green Sandpiper, Kings Meads (Between Hertford and Ware), 21 August

Juvenile Spotted Redshank, Kings Meads, 21 August

Hobby over Wilstone Reservoir, 20 August

Mallard (?) Hybrid, Startops End Reservoir, 20 August

UK Wildlife Sightings, August 2025

 Whilst my previous visit to East Anglia, in July (to Welney, Dersingham Bog and Snettisham), had been full of interest, birds, new dragonflies and butterflies, my next visit, to Walberswick on the 6th, was quite the opposite. Mind you, I had a single target in mind - Britain's 10th (I think) Zitting Cisticola (aka Fan-tailed Warbler). The bird had been present for some time when I visited, and there were only a handful of people waiting for it to appear. I sat down to wait, looking inland towards a marshy area with  a river channel running across about 200M ahead, for possibly the most boring three hours of my life. I heard the occasional 'zit' and, after a couple of hours, I saw the bird distantly in 'song flight' (I couldn't hear the song when others could, perhaps my hearing is not as good as I thought). Eventually, I did get a better view of the song flight and was able to properly 'tick' it off (my 371st UK bird species). What made the wait so boring was that there were hardly any other birds to see, at least until the last half hour (early evening), when the occasional egret flew by. The Cisticola is still present as I write on the 15th, so at least all UK bird watchers will have had the opportunity to see it.

July and August are 'dragonfly months' for me, when most of our UK species are on the wing at one time or another. I made a couple of trips in the first half of the month, looking to photograph particular species. First off was a visit to Santon Downham (Suffolk) on the 8th, my second of the summer, to have a go at photographing Banded Demoiselles. There were far fewer to see than on my first visit (see my June UK blog), but the ones that were present were somewhat easier to photograph, because they weren't being constantly disturbed by the flights of their neighbours! Good numbers of Ruddy Darters and Willow Emerald damselflies were also present along the banks of the river.

Male Banded Demoiselle, Santon Downham, 8 August

Male Ruddy Darter, Santon Downham, 8 August

I also made my annual visit to Paxton Pits (Cambridgeshire) to photograph the Common Darters there, in an area where there are usually 50+ on the wing at this time of the year. I came away with nearly 100 images, which were reduced to a dozen after editing. Here are a couple that I like.

Common Darter, Paxton Pits, 12 August

Common Darter, Paxton Pits, 12 August

On the 13th I chose my first visit of the year to Thursley Common in Surrey for a day out. It turned out to be a bad choice: the M25 western section was a nightmare in both directions, the road that I access to park at the Moat Pond was closed for roadworks, necessitating a 15 mile diversion and then there was a thunderstorm not long after I had arrived, cutting short my visit. Target dragonflies were Small Red Damselfly (which I did see) and Brilliant Emerald (which I didn't). Several Black Darters and Keeled Skimmers were also encountered before the rains came, as were some Stonechats close to the Moat Pond.

Male Black Darter, Thursley Common, 13 August

Small Red Damselfly, Thursley Common, 13 August

Juvenile Stonechat, Thursley Common, 13 August

"Butterflies and Birds of North Macedonia" - 'Naturetrek' Trip, June - July 2025

 Every year I take a wildlife holiday to somewhere in the world that I have not previously visited. In 2023 it was Japan, in 2024 it was The Gambia and this year I chose a shorter holiday, closer to home, in North Macedonia (formerly part of Yugoslavia). Two of my major wildlife interests (bird watching and butterfly photography) were well catered for and there was the chance to see other wildlife (particularly invertebrates and reptiles) that are not encountered in the UK and Western Europe. Unfortunately, the original leaders had to pull out due to illness. They were replaced at short notice by Slave, who proved to be an excellent and knowledgeable bird guide and leader, and Marek, the butterfly expert, who came all the way from the Czech Republic and proved to be a very keen and enthusiastic leader on all things 'butterfly'. Our group of 14 clients contained a considerable amount of expertise and I found that, as in The Gambia, that whilst at home I may be considered the 'local expert', here I was of little help in species identification. The party included some very keen 'moth-ers', who brought their moth traps with them and were up at 4.00am to check what the traps had captured.

North Macedonia is a small and beautiful country of mountains and plains. It is also very hot, with temperatures above 30C being 'the norm' for the time of our visit. In fact, temperatures reached 40C on our first two days, when most of our wildlife watching was done early or late, before returning to normal (around 30 - 35C) for the rest of the trip. The food was good and plentiful (perhaps too plentiful at times, as we were treated to some large lunches in cafes and restaurants). The first hotel (three nights) was good, although the air conditioning in the second hotel (four nights) left a lot to be desired and led to some poor sleeps. Only 'Wizz Air' departures from Luton fly directly to and from Skopje (the capital of North Macedonia) and they depart late in the evening, meaning that our arrival at the first hotel (12.30am) and our arrival back at Luton (2.00am) led to sleep deprivation (a common factor, it seems, on my wildlife holidays). I'll deal with the wildlife in three sections, Birds, Butterflies and Everything Else.

Typical Scenery in North Macedonia

Birds

I didn't come out with a 'wish list' of birds to see on this holiday. I have seen most of Europe's breeding birds and was more interested in getting good photos of (preferably) some of the species that we don't get in the UK. In fact, only three of the species that we were likely to see (Eastern Imperial Eagle, Ortolan Bunting and Rock Partridge) would be new to me. We saw the eagle on the first day and the Rock Partridge (which I thought at the time I had previously seen but in fact hadn't) later in the holiday, but the Ortolan Bunting remained elusive, despite Slave's best efforts to find one for me and one being seen by one of the other clients on the holiday. Ironically, an Ortolan Bunting was being 'twitched' in England whilst I was away! There were some good sightings nonetheless, including Lesser Spotted Eagle and both Dalmatian and White Pelicans. In all, we saw 138 species on the trip. Here are a few of my images.

Male Crested Lark, Singing

Male Lesser Kestrel

White Stork (they were nesting just up the road from our second Hotel)

Tawny Pipit

Black-headed Bunting

Butterflies

Around 200 species of butterfly can be found in North Macedonia, and we ended up with a trip list of 117 species (about twice the total number of species that can be found in the UK, and bear in mind that not all those species will be on the wing in midsummer). I had decided beforehand that I wouldn't make a big effort to see as many as possible, but would try to photograph a good variety. Marek was an enthusiastic 'netter' and a few of my fellow travellers also used nets to catch and, in some cases, place the butterflies in containers before (of course) releasing them after others had seen them. In this way, I probably saw all but a handful of these species although this wasn't an entirely satisfactory way, for me, of getting 'ticks'. We saw the Macedonian Grayling, the only North Macedonian endemic, as well as the very rare Yellow-legged Tortoiseshell Butterfly. As always, it was very difficult to sort out the rarer 'blues' from the masses of Common Blues, Small Blues and Brown Argus butterflies that were present everywhere we looked. Sometimes, as many as 200 could be seen 'puddling' in the mud together. Very few Swallowtails were seen, but Scarce Swallowtails were everywhere and at one site around 40 were seen together, picking up minerals from the mud. Many different species of Fritillary were seen, and it was interesting to note the hugely variable markings on the Lesser Spotted Fritillaries and (the commonest Fritillary), the Queen of Spain. Look at the following two images, both of Queen of Spain, for example.

Queen of Spain Fritillary, 'Standard' Markings

Queen of Spain Fritillary. Note the darker, heavier markings than on the Butterfly above

Common Blue, Small Blue and other Butterflies 'Puddling'

Eastern Greenish Black-Tip, a rare and localised Butterfly

Everything Else

One of the pleasures of the holiday was in seeing invertebrates, reptiles and amphibians that are rare or absent from Western Europe, such as the Four-lined Snake that was in the process of strangling a poor Blue Rock Thrush chick when we came across it near the entrance to a road tunnel, and the many Hermann's Tortoises that we saw. A good variety of dragonflies were seen, of which the Small Pincertail (image below) was the commonest. Giant Bush-crickets and huge Lacewings were encountered, as well as a variety of lizards. Very few mammals were encountered, but there was so much of everything else that it didn't really matter. I can heartily recommend North Macedonia for those who have a general interest in wildlife, in particular birds and invertebrates.

Small Pincertail Dragonfly

Four-lined Snake

Green Lizard

An attractive species of Ascalaphid