Ladies Day

The main thing today was of course the impressive and unprecedented arrival of painted lady butterflies into the patch.
An astonishing number were feeding on thistle and buttercups around Freeman's Pools with many hundreds present, in fact I eventually estimated up to a thousand individuals! It really was an awesome sight (and I DO mean awesome in the truest sense of the word, not in the way that a teenager finds everything awesome..."this orange juice is like totally awesome" etc)

Bird-wise the highlight was a female whinchat in a hedgerow above the upper track. Otherwise, the little-ringed plover family seemed intact and the gadwall pair were still on the pools along with 2m & 1f tufted ducks. A group of 28 Canada geese were new in on the river by Marsh Point while the pair in-residence at the pools remained.
Lots of common and lesser whitethroat seen and heard today.