The rest of May and a bit of June thrown in.

 After our big trip up to see the Mockingbird, things kind of ground to a halt for a while. The weather went downhill for a bit and we both had family commitments and covid jabs to mess up the weekends, so I have mostly gone for the usual local walks when I could.

The Aston End area has had a few visits at various times of the day. Compared to last year it certainly seems to be a bit quieter for many breeding species. Whitethroat numbers are down by about half, and I have only managed to locate one Lesser Whitethroat so far-last year there were at least half a dozen. Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs are ok, but Swallows are scarce, I only saw my first local Swifts at the end of May and I have yet to see any House Martins. On the other hand there seem to be a few small flocks of Linnets, maybe because there are more weedy uncultivated fields, and this has probably benefited the Yellowhammers as well. The rather wet spell has kept the Beane flowing and last week I found a singing male Reed Bunting near the ford for the first time in many years. The only other notable sightings were the female Wheatear on the 15th, and a pair of Bullfinch.

 

I have only been over to Langley and the Norton area once. A pair of feeding Yellow Wagtails in one of the muddy areas are presumably breeding somewhere locally.

The singing Corn Bunting is still around as well.

As usually happens, Quail have turned up between Baldock and Royston with one or two showy birds at Wallington over the bank holiday weekend, and two or three very invisible birds at Deadman's Hill last weekend which I went up to listen to on the 5th. While there, I had a flyover Yellow Wagtail and two Lapwing-local breeders? plus a few singing Corn Buntings and a couple of Partridge as well.

Sunday was going to be a butterfly trip in Wiltshire but I was a bit sceptical about the forecast and with lots of cloud and the occasional bit of drizzle driving down the A3 it wasn't' surprising that we had to rethink things a bit.

Bentley Wood is usually pretty good even when conditions aren't all that good, but not this time. The log book only had a few recent entries with a couple of Small Pearl Bordered and a Duke of Burgundy earlier in the week. We never saw a single butterfly so I concentrated on some of the plants while searching for birds which also seemed to be in short supply. One singing Tree Pipit was notable.

We scrapped the plan to go to Martin Down and headed for Noar Hill instead and I realised that there would be a good stopover at Chappetts Copse.

Here the Narrow (Sword) Leaved helleborines were out in abundance and a fantastic sight. We were also given pointers to a couple of Birds nest Orchids as well.

When we finally reached Noar Hill, the sun came out, it got rather hot and we started to see butterflies. Almost all were Small Blues for some reason, with one or two Dingy Skippers, Small Heaths and Holly Blues. Apart from a number of pretty well gone over Early Purples, Twayblades were the most abundant orchids. There were a few Common Spotted but they were small and weedy this year. The small wood in the north east corner had a few White Helleborines as expected and we found a number in a very open area that seemed have  been a cleared recently.

A search for Frog and Musk orchid was fruitless, which is not unusual for us as they aren't easy to find even when you know where they are supposed to be, and me feeling rather tired  under the weather didn't help either. Birds were again quiet, with only a few seen and or heard, but a hot June afternoon is not the best time. A pair of Bullfinch showed briefly and there was a rather odd sounding singing Song Thrush and a few Yellowhammers.