Standard route today, more or less, the seven miles or so past London Road Lake, and then up the hill on Clay Lane to the pack of Beacon Heights before going through the reserve.
Weather was warm and very very sultry, the orange tip butterflies seem to be inside having a cold drink leaving the various whites and Speckled Woods to play on their own. On London Road lake, a greylag goose was sat waterside on its own - never seen one here before, normally it's just the Canada Geese depositing their slimy green turds everywhere. The Greylags are normally to be found out of town at the old sailing club lake.
At Beacon Hill reserve, noticing a large amount of butterflies about, went to Butterfly Corner. The flowers aren't out yet, so no huge numbers of painted ladies and peacocks, but a flash of red revealed a Cinnabar Moth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnabar_Moth
amongst the plants at low level. I then noticed another rather plain looking pair of wings down amongst the weeds, a small butterfly with rather dowdy brown underwings. These opened to reveal dark/black uppers edged with red spots - ALERT flashed my brain, new species! Research at home seems to indicate this was a Brown Argus.
Yep, I know I'm not very good at this, I'm fairly recent to the butterfly spotting game, ok!
Sad news though - the fly tippers have been up here - always seems to be old CD and DVD cases I see for some reason, and evidence of two fires being lit. Maybe just kids messing, but I doubt the nottswildlife folk will be thrilled about the idea of having another local reserve going up in flames, ditto myself.
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