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.
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.
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.
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