An excellent day on the southern edge of the Preselis

Walking on the edge of forestry and open moorland this morning produced the usual expected species: including breeding wood warblers, a few pairs of redstarts, tree pipits, a few territorial spotted flycs (including two males having a right old scrap on the edge of the forestry), numerous siskins etc.

Noted a pair of kestrels (female with food escorted by a male who was keeping a close eye on one of at least 8 hunting buzzards) very close to one of Paddy's nest-boxes.

At least one cuckoo was calling regularly in the area. We noted a few nice lepidoptera including green hairstreak in typical heath-habitat but of course the stars were painted ladies - probably more than a thousand seen in about an hour or so, pretty well all moving in a northerly-north-westerly direction. I cannot recall anything quite like this since the last big invasion in 1996. On the Castlemartin coast yesterday painted ladies were around but no where near as numerous as reported on the Blog further north.

Today, once having got home to Martletwy, we did our weekly butterfly transect (a Butterfly Conservation Trust transect site). Although numbers were no where near as great as they had been earlier in north Pembs, nevertheless we recorded more painted ladies in one hour along the country lanes near Landshipping than the entire annual counts over 26 weeks each year over the last 8 previous years combined - amazing numbers!