Its all white!

Thought I'd settle for a couple of my own photographic efforts today, the first of which is a Bee which I unfortunately cannot identify but a reasonable try at macro work.

I spent one of the best two hours at Conder Green this morning that I can recall and must immediately make note of a bird which took my breath away when one - sorry I didn't get your name - of four birders who accompanied me on the platform at Conder Pool called 'small white bird with the Swallows' which was instantly identified as a pure white albino Swallow which gave us an excellent opportunity to watch as it passed by at a leisurely speed heading south, something of a chance in a lifetime event.

With the tide reaching its height everything in the area was on the pool which included 2 Spotted Redshank, 2 Ruff, 6 Greenshank, 9 Common Sandpiper, a juvenile Little Ringed Plover which certainly was not at its natal site, and was only pipped as best bird by the albino Swallow - 2 Little Egret, a Kingfisher, 4 Black-tailed Godwit, 2 Snipe, and the 3 Wigeon summer residents. In the two hours here at least 300 Swallow and 45 Swift went through south with a 'few' House Martin, also a Kestrel noted.

I decided to give Knott End 'a go' and found 38 Sandwich Terns and 2 Whimbrel of note. I then gave the excellent Cockers Dyke a look over and although the 'gull' numbers were low by usual standards a nice adult Mediterranean Gull was amongst them, also noted were 7 Sandwich Terns, c.250 Dunlin, 4 Knot having almost lost their red underparts, a solitary Ringed Plover, and 16 Golden Plover. The juvenile Cuckoo looks set to linger here to fatten up which it should do pretty quickly judging by the rate it can collect caterpillars at something like at least one a minute from my observations.

A call in at Fluke Hall had a good result if only to discover a major rarity in my book this summer so far with my first Gatekeeper, a single Wall Brown and Small Tortoiseshell, and 4 Common Blue. The only birds seen here in the brief visit were 22 Tree Sparrows.

And another bit of - not so clever - macro work of mine, showing the under-wing of a Common Blue butterfly....but I do have some stunning photographs - none of them mine - to post on Birds2blog in the coming days.