Untitled due to Pun Failure

Hi. Dan here, reporting on a pleasantly sunny afternoon on the patch.

The local lesser whitethroats seem to have got their second wind, with four singing vigorously. Three skylarks were in song over the saltmarshes too.

A family of common whitethroats and several juvenile long-tailed tits were in Freeman's Wood . Several grasshoppers were in song by the locustella warbler territory there, to confuse.

In fact, insects were perhaps more notable than birds, with around 300 common blue damselflies, and lesser numbers of blue-tailed damsels in the verges and pond margins.

Butterflies of note included 10 large skippers dotted about the verges, mostly feeding on purple vetch flowers.

The estuary showed an increase in black headed gulls (typical of mid to late summer here), and two broods of shelduckling were at the water's edge.

200 greyish bar-tailed godwits `just downstream of the pylons were presumably the oversummering Conder Green flock.  Two adult little-ringed plovers noted in the parish today. No juveniles in tow as yet.

DH