Monthly Archives: July 2025

Like Ticker Tape in the Blue

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by The Curious Scribbler

It was not only butterflies fluttering over my garden in the brilliant sunshine yesterday.  In the early evening the sky above the Llanychaiarn Church cemetery was filled with gulls, fluttering and wheeling in the sky, glinting bright white in the sunshine.  These were small gulls, about sixty or so, turning and swerving apparently catching high-flying insects above the freshly mown hayfield.  Amongst them were about  dozen or so Herring Gulls, flapping vigorously amongst them and staying within the flock, but not obviously partaking of the feast.  I’ve never seen such a display!

I fetched the binoculars, and concluded that these were Mediterranean Gulls.  Black headed with red legs and beak like our native Black- Headed Gulls, but so much whiter, without black wing tips,  and with a much gentler call unlike the raucous sounds you hear at a Black-Headed Gull colony.

The show continued for more than half an hour, gulls wheeling in the same place, like ticker tape twirling in the blue.

 

The Facebook group Ceredigion Birds and Wildlife is a marvellous resource.  Within minutes of posting the above video on the site I learnt that  two Mediterranean gulls and a juvenile had been spotted in Aberaeron a couple of days ago, then more than twenty on Friday.  Five hours before my  sighting on Saturday, the same respondent saw a flock of about sixty at Aberaeron, and yet another replied saying that the flock had passed over Llanon during the afternoon.  So this group was moving northwards.   Today another watcher reported seeing a flock at Newquay.

Mediterranean Gulls used to be quite a rarity in the UK but according to the RSPB  and Wildlife Trusts  they first bred in Hampshire in 1986 and are now are now resident on parts of the south coast from Hampshire to East Anglia.  They also breed, often among our native Black Heads on the Cumbrian Coast and Ireland.    Our visiting flock is still in full breeding plumage – the black head reduces to a dark spot by the eye in winter.  I wonder where they came from?

Oh and I’ve added the Peacock and the Small Copper to the tally of butterflies in my last post.  I could get used to this fine weather!

 

Butterflies in the sunshine

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By The Curious Scribbler,

There are so many gloomy stories about butterflies these days that I am moved to report some good news from my garden.

Sitting for half an hour on the lawn yesterday I was able to count eight species disporting themselves in the garden.  There were numerous immaculate newly emerged Red Admirals flitting around the apple trees.  Each time they encountered one another they spiralled upwards in a tight dance of two or even three butterflies, streaking across the sky above me like swallows before returning to the buddleia or the trees.  Sometimes one mis-identified another and swerved off in pursuit with a Comma.

Patrolling the circumference of my large yellow-berried holly was a Holly Blue, searching no doubt to attract a mate and lay eggs upon its shiny green foliage.

The Holly Blue (male/upperwing) Photo: Iain Leach

Several Large White butterflies ( or they may have been Small White)  roamed more freely from plant to plant, and four different species of brown butterflies put in an appearance.  A Ringlet, wings folded upright to display the eye spots, rested on a shrub and then fluttered among seeding grasses.  A Speckled Wood emerged from the deeper shade to bask on the holly, two Hedge Browns  (Gatekeepers) twirled together just above ground and a rather worn Meadow Brown  flitted in the hay meadow nearby.

I still identify butterflies from a little yellow book I was given for my tenth birthday – A Butterfly Book for the Pocket by Edmund Sandars.  Commenced in the late 19th century and first published in 1939 it was then a pioneering format with a life-size watercolour of each butterfly in both open-wing and closed wing positions, and a stippled map of its distribution in the British Isles on the facing page, along with a summary followed by more detailed two-page description.   Mine is the third impression, (1955) and contains thanks from the publisher for expert advice from Mr E.B. Ford who had added a further species ( but no picture) to the Appendix group of foreign butterflies which were occasionally seen in Britain.  In addition to the rare migrant European Pale Clouded Yellow Colias hyale, recognized by Sandars, Mr Ford  claimed an Scarce Clouded Yellow, Colias australis, which is normally found no nearer than Hawaii.

Professor E.B. Ford was still lecturing in Entomology at Oxford University when I studied there in 1969; he was so noted a misogynist that when only women attended his nine o’clock lectures he would decline to speak!  He was probably also wrong about the Scarce Clouded White, which no longer appears in the lists published on the Butterfly Conservation and UK Butterfly websites, but can be purchased from World Wide Butterflies.

These days we observe butterflies with binoculars rather than nets, so I have pinched the photo of the Holly Blue from the excellent Butterfly Conservation website.