Birds and butterflies

I wasn’t guiding yesterday and was hoping to enjoy and get better pictures of some of yesterday’s exciting birds.

There was only a single Hobby present today and whilst I was present it spent most of its time perched and I did not have the opportunity to take the flight photos of it hunting dragonflies that I had hoped for.

Quite surprisingly and rather embarrassingly I saw that the Whooper Swan pair has 8 young and not the 7 that I have previously reported. I checked all the previous pictures I have taken and see only 7 but I did take a short video previously and here I saw there are 8! Well 7 is the largest clutch size mentioned in BWP so these birds are rewriting the history books!  I also need to apologise to Dan who yesterday was quite sure there were 8 young but didn’t push it when I said there could only be 7..

Butterflies were in abundance in Maridalen with two new species for me in the form of Heath Fritillary (marimfjellerutevinge) and Large Wall Brown (klipperingvinge). There were also lots of white butterflies flying around and I really need to start identifying these rather than just thinking “white”.

Hobby (lerkefalk) I suspect that this bird may be a 2cy due to very pale red trousers

Whooper Swans (sangsvane) with 8 young (not, repeat, not 7)

female Teal (krikkand) also with 8 young

this Jay (nøtteskrike) was finding some very large green bugs to eat

with the bug

A small pearl bordered fritillary (brunflekket perlemorvinge)

a Heath Fritillary (marimjellrutevinge)

both the above species together which at first confused me as I thought they were maybe male and female of the same species

this Ringlet (gullringvinge) is completely lacking in spots on the upperwing and had me really confused at first

this was a bit tricky as there are two similar species: Northern Wall Brown (nergringvinge) and Large Wall Brown (klipperingvinge). I have concluded that it is the later due to an absence of 3 bars on the forewing

 

I thought this was going to be a type of skipper butterfly but it is a lattice heath moth (rutemåler)

a Northern Damselfly (vannlig blåvannymfe)