Nice weather for butterflies

Here in East Northants we have snow at the moment.  So it was tempting to forget the Christmas shopping and go out for a walk this morning - and I gave in to temptation!

There weren't many people about but I added my tracks in the snow to those of plenty of rabbits and several foxes.  Some tracks looked as though they might be otters' to me - and they were close to where I have seen otter at this site in the past. 

I wonder when the fox made his (her?) tracks?  Was it in the dead of night or earlier this morning?  For quite a while I followed the same path as the fox had, but in reverse.  He (or she) followed a pretty straight path, not deviating much in direction nor, as far as I could judge from the footsteps in the snow, in pace as he moved across the landscape.  He once turned to look at the water's edge - was there a vulnerable moorhen or duck sitting at the side of the river which caught his attention?  There was no sign of a kill.  Rabbit tracks crossed those of the fox - perhaps they watched him pass before venturing out - or perhaps they were separated by hours of time.  How long was the fox out?  And did he 'go home' hungry and cold.  Or did he enjoy the walk as much as I did mine?

I saw 48 species of bird in a two-hour walk.  Nothing special - although what is special?  All birds are special! 

The larger birds like ducks, lapwings, geese and crows just seemed to be sulking a bit in the cold.  Mostly sitting around doing very little. Many of the small birds seemed a bit tamer than usual - they were perhaps more desperate for food and therefore prepared to take the risk of being close to people.

One robin was hopping about on the ice of a frozen ditch.  it seemed to be finding something to eat - presumably stuff (small insects or seeds) that falls off the trees or blows onto the ice from the adjacent field.  If so, this is food that would normally disappear and be lost to that robin.

A little egret fitted the white landscape - a rare bird here in Northants even ten years ago but now a familiar sight at any time of year.

And a flock of tits, mostly long-tailed tits, crossed the path.  With them was a species that is becoming more familiar through the winter here - chiffchaff.  This small warbler is a harbinger of spring - one of the first migrants to return and start singing in our woods before the end of March.  But I see them quite often in the winter.  In fact, thanks to the wonders of Birdtrack I can tell you that in 52 visits to Stanwick in December-February over the past 6 years I have seen chiffchaffs 10 times.  I guess that means they are here all the time - they aren't the most obvious bird and it is usually in tit-flocks that I see them.

The chiffchaff is a species I see, and delight in hearing too, on almost every visit I make to Stanwick in April-July.  Most of the other summer visitors - the other warblers such as sedge warbler and whitethroat, and the swift, swallow, common tern and cuckoo - are wisely on the other side of the Sahara in much warmer climes now.  They have been replaced, in a way, by the fieldfares and redwings, the siskins and redpolls, and goldeneyes and goosanders on the lakes.  That twice-yearly massive turnover of birds is an amazing natural process - a testament to the power of natural selection - but also a process that means that a regular walk at the same site is always tapping into a different part of the annual cycle and so the birds are always different.

Back in May, in one of the first blogs I wrote here, I described looking for and finding the eggs of orange tip butterflies on the lady's smock plants.  Those eggs would have hatched a few weeks later and the pupae are now attached somewhere on woody stems nearby.  The eggs were found in the open area in the third photograph on today's blog - can you see the pupae?  Of course not, but they are there somewhere, waiting for next spring.  Every orange tip that I see early next spring will have spent the winter, including this snowy, icy, freezing day, stuck to a twig somewhere nearby.

Unlike birds, there are just a few strongly migratory butterfly species in the UK.  This year we saw plenty of evidence of butterfly migration with the massive numbers of painted ladies which arrived from southern Europe and north Africa in May.  But most of our butterflies - like the orange tip - are here all the year around, some as hibernating adults (eg small tortoiseshell, brimstone) but also at this time of year as eggs (eg Essex skipper), larvae (eg  common blue), or pupae (eg orange tip, holly blue and green-veined white).  So this snowy day is a great day for butterflies - it's just that we can't see them very easily!