In August, we took a trip to Blakeney on the North Norfolk coast. Headed there on travel day via NT Blickling Hall. Visited Cley, Morston, almost to Stiffkey, Cromer.
Another visit to North Norfolk
Author: David Bradley
Blakeney birding, mothing, and sealing
We spent a week in a lovely little cottage in Blakeney on the North Norfolk coast in August 2024. Did a lot of walking, eating & drinking, and a bit of birding. Also took a couple of boat trips out to see the seals on Blakeney Point, a spit created by longshore drift depositing shingle from the east just off this part of the coast. Seal species there: Common, or Harbour, Seal (Phoca vitulina) – the ones with the cat-like, cutesy faces and Grey, or Atlantic, Seal (Halichoerus grypus) – the ones with the more brutish dog-looking heads.
I also took a portable Heath moth trap with a 15-Watt actinic tube and did a spot of mothing each evening from dusk till dawn. The cottage garden was largely paved, walled on three sides and with limited flowering plants in it or neighbouring gardens. the garden looked out over the turfed beer garden of Blakeney Harbour Room. I recorded 400+ moths of 82 species. Six of those species I had not recorded at home in Cambridgeshire:
Black Arches
Magpie
Maple Prominent
Musotima nitidalis
Pale Eggar
Purple Bar
Square-spotted Clay
Tawny Barred Angle
I had previously recorded Black Arches (New Forest 2022) and Magpie (Waxham Sands, Norfolk 2019). We also think we may have seen a Speckled Yellow on the coastal path between Morston and Stiffkey. However, this is way out of its normal flight season and also far from its known Breckland home, so seems very unlikely. That said, I cannot find another yellow moth with black specks that it could have been…
Here’s the full list of moth species from the cottage garden:
Agriphila geniculea, Agriphila straminella, Black Arches, Blood-vein, Box-tree Moth, Brimstone, Brown House Moth, Bryotropha basaltinella, Cabbage Moth, Canary-shouldered Thorn, Carcina quercana, Chequered Fruit-tree Tortrix, Chinese Character, Chrystoteucha culmella, Common Carpet, Common Footman, Common Plume, Common Pug, Common Wainscot, Copper Underwing, Coronet, Dagger agg, Dark Arches, Dingy Footman, Double-striped Pug, Dusky Thorn, Dwarf Cream Wave, Eudonia sp., Flame Shoulder, Flounced Rustic, Garden Carpet, Garden Pebble, Garden Rose Tortix, Green Carpet, Iron Prominent, Large Yellow Underwing, Least Carpet, Light Brown Apple Moth, Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, Lesser Yellow Underwing, Lime-speck Pug, Magpie, Maple Prominent, Marbled Beauty, Mother-of-Pearl, Mouse Moth, Musotima nitidalis, Nutmeg, Orange Swift, Pale Eggar, Pale Mottled Willow, Poplar Kitten, Purple Bar, Pyrausta aurata, Riband Wave, Ringed China-mark, Rustic agg, Setaceous Hebrew Character, Silver Y, Single-dotted Wave, Small Dusty Wave, Spectacle, Square-spot Rustic, Square-spotted Clay, Shuttle-shaped Dart, Straw Dot, Straw Underwing, Swallow Prominent, Tawny Barred Angle, Tawny Speckled Pug, Tree Lichen Beauty, Turnip, Udea lutealis, Vapourer, Vine’s Rustic, Wax Moth, White point, White-shouldered House Moth, Willow Beauty, Yellow Barred Brindle, Yellow Shell, Yponomeuta sp.
Some moth-ers do have ’em
Just in case you’re new here…there will be moths! If you’ve been with me for a while, you know all too well just how many moths there might be. I’ve been “mothing” since July 2018 with various kinds of UV lamp and traps as well as doing some wild mothing beyond the garden and campsite facilities block mothing. My garden list is now well over 500 species.
Here are some Pixlr collages I’ve used on the socials to share the kinds of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) that I’ve recorded and photographed.
Never Grows Old – A song
A tale of stolen lands and ancestors
Never Grows Old
I’m riding through the sacred lands
Where they’ll take you down and they’ll break your hands
Riding in the shotgun fire
Where the trees are scorched by the funeral pyre
Tell me now, do you know what’s on the inside?
Beyond the world, we can run but we cannot hide
Tell me now, can you feel the flames drawing your breath
from your very bones with a spirit that never grows old, never grows old?
I’m blowing ash to the wind
Where they’ll cut you down and they’ll bury your sins
Screaming for the life and times
Of a medicine man with his tainted signs
Kicking up the dust again
When they shake you down and say “Amen!”
Listen to the spirits cry as they pick it up with their eagle eyes
Tell me now, do you know what’s on the inside?
Beyond the world, we can run but we cannot hide
Tell me now, can you feel the flames drawing your breath
from your very bones with a spirit that never grows old, never grows old?
I’m blowing ash to the wind
I’m riding through the sacred lands
Kicking up the dust again
Shake me down and say “Amen!”
Shake me down and say “Amen!”
Shake me down, Shake me down
The spirit never grows old
Never grows old, never grows old
Something of a 70s southern rocker heading from near sweet home Alabama all the way back to early 90s Madchester by way of Willowdale
Ely Folk Festival 2024
Caught the last day of the Ely Folk Festival 2024, with Jez Lowe, Boo Hewerdine, Brooks Williams, Eddie Reader, Rusty Shackle and others performing.
Eddie Reader
Brooks Williams
Birds of Lake Kerkini and surroundings
Lake Kerkini is an astonishing place in northern Greece. Mrs Sciencebase and I visited in June 2024. I’ve put together galleries of the butterflies and moths we saw on our trip, trekking and boating in the area.
I took rather a lot of photos and have only now got around to processing the birds. We saw a lot of birds, tens of thousands of them were Common Cormorant, hundreds were Great White Pelican and Dalmation Pelican, lots were herons and egrets of various species, Spoonbills, a handful of Nightingales, fleeting glimpses of Hoopoe (sadly), a solitary Glossy Ibis, and just the vocalisations of Sardinian Warbler, Cirl Bunting, and a few others no solid sightings. Merlin app also picked up a few that we didn’t see nor hear, and are possibles but questions that will never be answered, such as Wryneck, Thrush Nightingale, Hawfinch, Red Crossbill.
Here’s a list of the 90+ bird species we saw and heard. I suspect we also saw Lesser Kestrel and Eleanora’s Falcon at some point without getting positive IDs on those two:
- Bee-eater, European (Merops apiaster)
- Blackbird, Common (Turdus merula)
- Blackcap, Eurasian (Sylvia atricapilla)
- Bunting, Cirl (Emberiza cirlus) (heard only or Merlin)
- Buzzard, Common (Buteo buteo)
- Buzzard, Honey (Pernis apivorus)
- Chaffinch, Eurasian (Fringilla coelebs)
- Chiffchaff, Common (Phylloscopus collybita)
- Coot, Eurasian (Fulica atra)
- Cormorant, Great (Phalacrocorax carbo)
- Cormorant, Pygmy (Microcarbo pygmaeus)
- Crossbill, Red (Loxia curvirostra) (heard only or Merlin)
- Crow, Carrion (Corvus corone)
- Crow, Hooded (Corvus cornix)
- Cuckoo, Common (Cuculus canorus)
- Dove, Collared (Streptopelia decaocto)
- Dove, Turtle (Streptopelia turtur)
- Eagle, Booted (Hieraaetus pennatus) Michael d only
- Egret, Little (Egretta garzetta)
- Firecrest, Common (Regulus ignicapillus)
- Flamingo, Greater (Phoenicopterus roseus)
- Flycatcher, Spotted (Muscicapa striata)
- Goldcrest (Regulus regulus)
- Goldfinch, European (Carduelis carduelis)
- Grebe, Great Crested (Podiceps cristatus)
- Greenfinch, European (Chloris chloris) (heard only or Merlin)
- Gull, Black-headed (Chroicocephalus ridibundus)
- Gull, Caspian (Larus cachinnans)
- Gull, Yellow-legged (Larus michahellis)
- Hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes) (heard only or Merlin)
- Heron, Grey (Ardea cinerea)
- Heron, Night (Nycticorax nycticorax)
- Heron, Purple (Ardea purpurea) Niko the skipper only
- Heron, Squacco (Ardeola ralloides)
- Hobby, Eurasian (Falco subbuteo)
- Hoopoe, Eurasian (Upupa epops)
- Ibis, Glossy (Plegadis falcinellus)
- Jackdaw, Eurasian (Corvus monedula)
- Jay, Eurasian (Garrulus glandarius)
- Kestrel, Common (Falco tinnunculus)
- Kingfisher, Common (Alcedo atthis) (heard only or Merlin)
- Lark, Crested (Galerida cristata)
- Linnet, Common (Linaria cannabina)
- Martin, House (Delichon urbicum)
- Moorhen, Common (Gallinula chloropus)
- NightingaleLuscinia megarhynchos(Luscinia megarhynchos)
- Nightingale, Thrush (Luscinia luscinia) (heard only or Merlin)
- Oriole, Golden (Oriolus oriolus)
- Owl, Little (Athene noctua)
- Pelican, Dalmatian (Pelecanus crispus)
- Pelican, Great White (Pelecanus onocrotalus)
- Pigeon, Common Wood (Columba palumbus)
- Pigeon, Stock (Columba oenas)
- Raven, Common (Corvus corax)
- Redstart, Black (Phoenicurus ochruros) (heard only or Merlin)
- Robin, European (Erithacus rubecula)
- Shrike, Masked (Lanius nubicus)
- Shrike, Red-backed (Lanius collurio)
- Skylark, Eurasian (Alauda arvensis)
- Sparrow, House (Passer domesticus)
- Sparrow, Spanish (Passer hispaniolensis)
- Sparrow, Eurasian Tree (Passer montanus)
- Sparrowhawk, Eurasian (Accipiter nisus)
- Sparrowhawk, Levant (Accipiter brevipes)
- Spoonbill, Eurasian (Platalea leucorodia)
- Starling, Common (Sturnus vulgaris)
- Stork, Black (Ciconia nigra)
- Stork, White (Ciconia ciconia)
- Swallow, Barn (Hirundo rustica)
- Swallow, Red-rumped (Cecropis daurica)
- Swan, Mute (Cygnus olor)
- Swift, Pallid (Apus pallidus)
- Tern, Common (Sterna hirundo)
- Tit, Blue (Cyanistes caeruleus)
- Tit, Coal (Periparus ater)
- Tit, Great (Parus major)
- Tit, Long-tailed (Aegithalos caudatus)
- Treecreeper, Eurasian (Certhia familiaris)
- Wagtail, Grey (Motacilla cinerea)
- Wagtail, White (Motacilla alba) (heard only or Merlin)
- Warbler, Cetti’s (Cettia cetti)
- Warbler, Eastern Olivaceous (Iduna pallida) (heard only or Merlin)
- Warbler, Great Reed (Acrocephalus arundinaceus)
- Warbler, Moustached (Acrocephalus melanopogon) (heard only or Merlin)
- Warbler, Sardinian (Sylvia melanocephala) (heard only or Merlin)
- Wheatear, Northern (Oenanthe oenanthe)
- Woodpecker, Great Spotted (Dendrocopos major)
- Woodpecker, Green (Picus viridis)
- Woodpecker, Middle Spotted (Dendrocopos medius)
- Wren, Eurasian (Troglodytes troglodytes)
- Wryneck, Eurasian (Jynx torquilla) (heard only or Merlin)
All my blog posts about our Greece24 trip can be found here. The bird gallery is over on my Imaging Storm site.
With thanks to Tricia, Michael “d”, Martine, and Niko for many of the first sightings and IDs of birds, butterflies, moths, and other creatures. I have added photos of several of the various invertebrates we encountered to the introductory blog posts on our 2024 trip to Greece.
The last of my Greek butterflies
I started off with several thousand photos from our recent trip to northern Greece (June 2024). A lot of those were simply burst-mode shots of the same specimen where I hoped to capture it in the perfect pose between fluttering or flapping of bird or butterfly wings. I backed up all the full SD cards on to an external hard drive and then used FastStone Viewer on my laptop to work through the collections as quickly as I could discarding obvious blurs and duds and then homing in the generally decent photos.
I think I ended up with about 500. I then processed these with DxO PureRaw 4, Topaz Sharpen, and PaintShopPro and began adding to the Sciencebase site. This is the final batch (batch 10) of butterflies from the trip and rather than break it up into several blogs, I’ve made it one long scrollable page with all the decent remaining shots from the collection.
Butterflies of Greece Batch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Another clutch of Greeks
Amanda’s Blue, Polyommatus amandus
Great Banded Grayling, Brintesia circe
Heath Fritillary, Melitaea athalia
Scarce Swallowtail, Iphiclides podalirius
Southern White Admiral, Limenitis reducta
Painted Lady, Vanessa atalanta
Great Banded Grayling, Brintesia circe
Great Banded Grayling, Brintesia circe
Heath Fritillary, Melitaea athalia
Scarce Swallowtail, Iphiclides podalirius
Southern White Admiral, Limenitis reducta
Southern White Admiral, Limenitis reducta
Painted Lady, Vanessa atalanta
More butterflies of northern Greece
This is the rare, “helice” form of the female Clouded Yellow butterfly, Colias croceus f. helice. Not to be confused with the Pale and the Berger’s Clouded Yellow species. Spotted first on our trip Mrs Sciencebase. We get Clouded Yellow in rare irruption years in the UK, as I’ve mentioned before. Not seen this helice form before though.
Yellow-banded Skipper, Pyrgus sidae, looks a bit like Mallow Skipper from above, but has this lovely custard yellow banding on the underside of its forewings, visible in my photo.
Large Blue, Phengaris arion, quite rare in the UK and found only in specific pockets of habitat.
This skipper, the Large Skipper, Ochlodes sylvanus, is one of a handful of species we see in the UK.
We have a couple of fritillary-type butterflies in the UK, but there are a lot more species in Greece. This is one of them, the delightful Knapweed Fritillary, Melitaea phoebe.
Marbled White, Melanargia galathea, is a species we do see in the British summer. Funnily enough this mainly white-coloured species is not a “white” by family, but one of the browns, a Nymphalidae, more closely related to the Meadow Brown than the Large White, for instance.
I’ve mentioned White-letter Hairstreak, Satyrium w-album, several times on Sciencebase over the last few years, having identified a colony myself in Rampton in 2022. Very much present in the UK too. But, lovely to see the species in Greece too. The scientific name suggestive of the butterfly being a satyr, with a white (album) “w” on its wings. Also in the shot, what I believe is a Red Longhorned Beetle, Stictoleptura rubra, in flight.
Clouded Yellow, Colias croceus f. helice
Yellow-banded Skipper, Pyrgus sidae
Large Blue, Phengaris arion
Large Skipper, Ochlodes sylvanus
Knapweed Fritillary, Melitaea phoebe
Marbled White, Melanargia galathea
White-letter Hairstreak, Satyrium w-album
Eastern Festoon, Allancastria cerisyi
On our recent butterflying, birding, and mothing trip to Northern Greece, I was keen to catch sight of an Eastern Festoon, Allancastria cerisyi, and hopefully get some photographs of this amazing member of the Papillonidae. The Papillonidae family is the “swallowtails” featured elsewhere on our trip in the form of the Scarce Swallowtail and the Yellow Swallowtail.
Our intrepid guide Michael spotted the first of our Eastern Festoons in a little fallow field we were investigating that had a nice bramble border. The same field with our first European Green Lizard. Later I saw an Eastern Festoon in flight with its wings full displaying, but didn’t get a flight shot. So, these will have to do for my records of this species.
Butterflies of Greece Batch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9