Morning Walk - a stroll around Chambers Wood watching wildlife
dannewton just finished a 6.45km walk, that lasted for 122 minutes.
This walk helped dannewton burn 613.0 calories.
Description from Strava: Something a little different from the usual 'long run' I would do on a Saturday.
My partner is working tomorrow, so the only day this weekend we can do anything is today, so I decided to change it up so we could go out for a nice walk somewhere instead (and I'll go for a long run tomorrow).
I haven't managed many of these this year, and none since she returned home from university
The location we picked was Chambers Farm Woods, which is a lovely little reserve 10 miles east of Lincoln. It is a fantastic example of ancient woodland, and one of the best examples of this habitat in Lincolnshire.
It started out damp and drizzly, but eventually the clouds passed over and we got some brief periods of sunshine
As the sun appeared, we managed to see some insect activity. I spent most of the walk filming stuff with my action camera, so didn't take many photos, but there are a few below
Highlights were as usual all the lepidoptera species (butterflies AND moths)
There were several of these little Oak Green Tortrix flitting about along the paths
Near the end of the walk we came across a small meadow, in which we counted 7 Marsh Fritillary butterflies. These are well established here in Chambers Wood, but the distribution is very intermittent across the rest of the country. Once common, this species is just one of many in steep decline in recent decades.
Such a rarity, and a well known location attracts visitors to travel accros the country to this reserve, just to see this species.
In fact, while talking to one such fellow enthusiast from Yorkshire, he mentioned that he had seen another interesting sighting back at the car park - a Broad-bordered Bee Hawkmoth.
this was exciting news!
We quickly thanked him for the info, and dashed back to the car park in the hopes we could see them too
Lo and behold, feeding on the Red Valerian Flowers, we managed to catch a glimpse of this striking looking species
Looking at these pictures helps to explain where the name comes from... with those yellow and black stripes, and clear wings, it is an excellent Bee-mimic.
I have seen this species once before, many years ago, and it was an absolute joy to see them again! It was also a perfect way to round of what had been a lovely stroll in the (eventual) sunshine.
It also partly inspired me to drag the moth trap back out tonight, so you can look forward to a post on that in the coming days :-)
If you would like to check out this activity on strava you can see it here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/11603377957
About the Athlete: Living in the UK, I am an intermittent Runner, but always striving for more consistency. When I'm not training I can be found photographing insects or listening to really loud angry music (which is the best type of music obviously!)
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Brilliant pictures,especially of that Broad-bordered Bee Hawkmoth.
I keep trying to take pictures of insects myself, but with my pocket camera I generally have to wait for flying ones to land.
I did manage this chap last year though.
!BBH
!ALIVE
Its hard work isn't it! They whizz about so quickly, and it's so hard to get close enough to them without scaring them off
Good effort on the Hummingbird Hawkmoth though, a little bit bigger and chunkier than the Bee Hawkmoth, but still really hard to capture
!LUV
Were you scared while passing the chamber farm woods?
The pictures are beautiful and I’m glad you had an interesting run
It was a lovely place to visit, I must try to go more often!
Those were some nice finds. I've not seen too many butterflies around the garden recently. We did let things grow during May so I was hoping for more insect live. We will still keep some long grass through the summer.
As we've previously mentioned, its been a weird year in terms off weather... all it will take is a week of warm dry afternoons, and you see stuff all over the place
!LUV