A curious day with frequent rain, but occasional warm, even sunny spells. Each time the rain stopped and the sky brightened, insects suddenly appeared, desperately trying to get warmed up and moving. It was a rather odd day altogether, with almost all my planned work failing to get done. Overnight the Hanson plant had been broken into again, this time via our car park and including knocking out one of the concrete bollards at the entrance. Not a huge amount of damage but it takes time dealing with the aftermath.
At one point in the afternoon one of the bright spells coincided with a time when I was waiting near the main entrance and I got the camera out and got a few pictures of the insects tempted out. First was one of many meadow brown, they don't often rest with their wings wide open, but when they are trying to warm up quickly they will.
Rather less obviously appealing, but actually rather fabulous, was a horse-fly, this one a male so it was not going to try and bite me. The species is Chrysops relictus and like almost all horse-flies it has the most brilliant coloured eyes. Some species also have patterns, perhaps not compensation for a painful bite but something to marvel at all the same.
My last basking insect was a caterpillar, it is of one of the burnet moth species, if I had to choose I would probably go for narrow-bordered five-spot burnet but I may well be wrong.
There were few birds to report today, several more of the common tern chicks were making practice flights. Over on Ibsley Water the largest lapwing chick is now flying and the younger brood still has at least two chicks.
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