Tag Archives: wildlife photography

June Field Meeting – High Batts Nature Reserve

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The June field meeting took us to the members only nature reserve, High Batts near Ripon. 12 of us convened for an amble round this amazing reserve, a new sight for all of us, and we meandered through woodland, meadow, damp areas and used hides overlooking ponds and rivers. Amongst the birds, we had multiple views of kingfisher, blackcap, whitethroat feeding young, grey heron and a female Mandarin duck with young. Common spotted orchids, yellow flag iris, vipers’ bugloss. burnet rose and scarlet pimpernel lined the paths and, despite the cool, overcast conditions, the insects were plentiful; banded demoiselle, common and blue-tailed damselfly, speckled wood, red cardinal beetle, and various species of hoverfly, including Volucella pucellens, were all recorded.

Wakefield Naturalists' members

Wakefield Naturalists’ members

Burnet Rose and common spotted orchid

Burnet Rose and common spotted orchid

Nature lovers looking at wet meadow

Studying the wetland area

Whitethroat

Whitethroat

Whitethroat with ghost moth

Whitethroat with ghost moth

Volucella pellucens

Volucella pellucens

cow parsley

cow parsley

High Batts is an exceptional reserve, tucked away off the beaten track and run privately, it really is a first-class place to visit and I can only imagine how many more species we would have seen had the weather been a little warmer and brighter. I can highly recommend the site and it is well worth the £11 (£15 for a family) membership fee for those wanting to experience the reserve.

Orange Tip bonanza

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Our lockdown local walks have been drenched in warm, sunny spring weather during April with high temperatures more reminiscent of Spain rather than England, Along with alll the spring migrants arriving on these warm fronts, our own native orange tip butterflies seem to have been thriving. They are on the wing in the latter part of April and early May and depend on early flowering plants, such as deandelions and garlic mustard for nectar, and there’s no shortage of these at the moment. So it appears the orange tips wiull have a perfect season and will have chnace to lay plenty of eggs for next year.

We have been getting quite a few orange tips in the garden throughout the last few weeks and if one arrives in the garden at around 5pm, they often stay to roost presenting me with some lovely photo opportunities proving you don’t have to go for for good photo subjects.