It's noisy out there!

Relatively quiet in terms of visitors, but there's quite a din coming from around the woodland paths between the hides today - Bob mentioned great spotted woodpeckers yesterday, and they are still around today and contributing to the general cacophony of young great tits, blue tits and blackcaps all calling to be fed morsels by harassed looking parents.

Both great crested grebe families continue to do well on Ivy Lake, as are the several families of coots, including the most recent hatching on one of the "stick and lifebuoy" nesting rafts in front of Ivy South Hide.
The rather cool and windy day means that there is not much in the way of insects to report on, but there was another reasonable haul in the moth trap, including angleshades, peppered moth , poplar hawkmoth and lesser swallow prominent (pictured). Also pictured below is an orangetip butterfly caterpillar that we have been keeping an eye on. Photographed on one of its common foodplants, hedge garlic, this afternoon it has been joined by a female common blue damselfly, who pulled the usual damselfly trick of creeping around the seedpod she was hanging onto in order to keep it between her and me.