Amwell

The weather has been a bit indifferent today. I had hoped to do some local butterfly sites this morning, but  the cloud and wind put me off so I went to Amwell instead.
Met Bill and Julie. Bill has only just come back from a few days in Scotland, and had a fairly good time getting most of the butterflies and dragonflies, but the birding was pretty poor. He was at Arnside Knot yesterday and had seen large numbers of Dark Green Fritillaries but only one or two High Browns-bad news as I was thinking of going for the latter soon.
 As usual not much was happening on the main lake-yesterdays Black Tail Godwits had gone, but both Redshank and Oystercatcher had had a successful breeding season-Julie and I joined Tony and Brian in the main hide and we spent a long time watching the chicks feeding. The only other bird of note is an Egyptian Goose that apparently pops in from time to time for a nap.
 Few hirundines this visit-a few Sand Martins joined the Swifts but most were too distant over the town. There seems to be a lack of Hobbies too-usually we can expect to see two or three at this time of year, but I have only had two sightings here all year. The only raptors were a female Sparrowhawk and a couple of Buzzards seen just before I parked the car.