Wembury, August 5th 2016

A quick walk at Wembury today before the arrival of my nephew and Mum for a short visit and there was quite a bit of interesting stuff around in the warm and sunny weather.

No moths again in the toilet block and just a rush veneer seen along the walk, flushed from the grass at The Point. Butterflies were much in evidence with peacock, small tortoiseshel, common blue, red admiral, holly blue, large white, gatekeeper, meadow brown and green veined white all seen - the field of yellow flowers at The Point were still blooming but there were only a few large white flitting over it today unlike on my visit last week.

 Peacock

 Large White

 Holly Blue

Holly Blue

A bloody nose beetle, 4 very small and dark looking young common lizards, a ruby tailed wasp and a long winged conehead were also seen.

 Common Lizard

 Long Winged Conehead

Fly Sp.

The Point was the place to be with plenty of whitethroats flitting about in the vegetation, noticeably small family groups with a male seen feeding a quite well developed youngster. A chiffchaff was seen feeding with a group of whitethroats but best of all was a sedge warbler perched on top of a sloe bush by the footpath before being disturbed by walkers. A peregrine flew over heading east and a green woodpecker was heard yaffling away. A cirl bunting was seen singing in the HMS Cambridge footpath hedgerow and later seen feeding 2 fledglings a beakful of insects before they all flew off along with a female. A second male cirl bunting was seen singing in the sewage farm hedge and a third male was heard only at The Point. On the rocks at high tide were 7 curlew, 4 little egret, 2 whimbrel and around 20 oystercatchers but there was no sign of any mallards this time.

 Whimbrel

 Woodpigeon collecting nest material

 Woodpigeon on nest

Old Wren nest in hedgerow by footpath noticed after vegetation cut back by The National Trust

Offshore there were variously aged gannets flying about in all directions and I managed to pick out 4 distant Manx shearwaters flying West. 2 fulmars were flying around The Mewstone and 5 summer plumaged dunlin flew west low over the waves.

And so a very pleasant walk indeed before heading home to do the house work prior to the family arriving for their visit.