The Legendary Me

No, not me, but the title of the Wizz Jones CD that I was playing as I wrote this posting today. Wizz spent the 1960's becoming a great blues guitarist around the folk club circuit in England and that album was released in 1970. The old boy is still going strong and I saw him perform at Whitstable Folk Club just last summer.

It was hot and sunny from the word go on the reserve this morning, just superb, unfortunately it never lasts long enough. The Flood has completely dried out now and the "S Bend Ditch" is heading that way with more and more mud becoming exposed. This morning it had attracted 7 Little Egrets, 4 Green Sandpipers and the first two returning Teal.
Up on the seawall the Ground Lackey moth caterpillars have started leaving the saltings now and making their way onto the sea wall to pupate in the long vegetation. I found these two this morning as I walked along the wall.




Despite the continuing reports of large numbers of butterflies inland, especially Large Skippers, butterflies in general still remain in low numbers on the reserve, a good mix of varieties but low numbers and I've had a total of just 6 Small Skippers so far. Another big disappointment this year has been the absence of Cinnabar Moth caterpillars, despite large amounts of Ragwort I've found just the one caterpillar, can't remember the last time this happened.

I made my way off the reserve and spent some time wandering across some of the farmland and came across an adult female Marsh Harrier and three recently fledged young. They had nested in a corn field and it was nice to know that they had fledged before combining starts. Before they all flew off one fledgling stayed long enough for me to quickly get this photo


And lastly, how many of you remember this stuff, Barley Grass. As schoolchildren we used to throw it at each other as darts and as it usually had tiny black beetles in the darts we used to throw them into each other's hair shouting "fleas in your hair"