Not only birds have wings...

Wednesday 7th August

Barry and I spent the afternoon at North Cave looking for butterflies and dragonflies - and, of course, for anything else that happened to turn up!

Let's start with a nice common blue butterfly...

Common Blue

...followed by a common blue damselfly.

Common Blue Damselfly This hoverfly was... well, hovering!

Hoverfly Note the beetle, right, coming to have a look.

Meadow browns were showy today, basking with their wings open.

Meadow Brown Meadow brown A common darter posed for some nice images.

Common Darter Common Darter female Common Darter We were quite surprised to see a brimstone butterfly in August.

Brimstone Note how almost transparent the butterfly is: you can see the brown stalk through its wings. There were good numbers of small skippers about too.Small Skipper Small Skipper Plus large whites...Large White ...green veined whites...

Green-veined White ...peacocks in huge numbers, looking very pristine...

Peacock ...speckled woods...

Speckled Wood ...and very hard to pin down small tortoiseshells. Of course we don't pin down our butterflies these days - only metaphorically!

Small tortoiseshell Some friendly birders put us on to a group of corn buntings. Great views were had including this sequence. My first photos of corn buntings.

Corn Bunting Corn Bunting Corn Bunting Corn Bunting We spent a while in East Hide. Some common terns were busy fishing for their youngsters. Black tip to the bill...

Common Tern ...no black tip! But still a common tern I think.

Common Tern

Two black birds!

Black Swan A little grebe came up close.

Little Grebe

Thursday 8th August

This time we went early to Flamborough for a seawatch. Nothing special seen on the sea other than a few manx shearwaters, fulmars, puffins, gannets and lots of pretty juvenile kittiwakes. However as we got out of Tiggy [literally] I spotted a very white bird over by the farm to the south...

Barn Owl Barn Owl ..and then, a little later on the clifftop, a wheatear.

Wheatear Below we watched a kayaking fisherman and a nearby seal.

Kayaker Flamborough Looking at the photos I am concerned the seal was somehow entangled in some rope.

Grey Seal Find of the day was when Barry spotted a brightly coloured little butterfly - a small copper. Only small copper has black spots like this - however he was unwilling to give really good views.Small Copper We moved on to Thornwick Pools hide where we saw dunlin, greylags...

Greylag Geese ...and a young grey [?] wagtail.

Pied Wagtail Always a good idea to check for the enemy!

Pied Wagtail Nice pose.

Pied Wagtail We finished the day at Fairburn where we found a female mandarin duck [thanks to the birders at North Cave the day before] and we may have seen a Caspian gull. On the other hand we may not! So not counted. Still on 245 2013. It's about time a biggy came along!!

Dont forget to visit http://barryjohnbishop.blogspot.co.uk/ for another 'take' on our adventures!

Happy birding!