Black Tailed Godwit and Dragonflies at Upton Warren

My solely birding time has for the last year and a half been drastically reduced. It is interesting - make a change of career to work in the area of conservation and while my time spent outside has gone up drastically the time spent on previous pursuits has dwindled.

Of course it makes sense when you are spending time learning to manage woodland (coppicing, felling etc) and learning crafts such as hedge laying as well the installation of gates, styles, different fence types, revetments, pathways etc as well as broadening id skills in Lepidoptera, flora and other areas. And then of course there is the typical day in the life of a ranger which doesn't really include much time to watch the wildlife that is around but is rather a day filled with phone calls, litter picking, visitor questions, checking site fittings, stocking the shop and mopping out the loos. The walks and wildlife watching events and school groups make up only a small part when you can actually get out there and the surveys even less time out there. Even so I wouldn't want to swap back to a life in a shirt and collar in the corporate world.

However the trips to Upton Warren on the evenings have slowly been increasing and today for the first time in a long time I actually made it to the reserve in the morning. The reward for making some 'day time' time to bird was that there were five Black Tailed Godwit on the Moors, not close enough for a close photograph but as all of my photographs this year have been of anything but birds even a distance shot is an improvement.

(three of the five Black-tailed godwit on the moors)

Birds aside, the reserve was alive today with damsel, dragonfly and butterflies and the day was far too nice to spend too much time in the confines of the hides, even though the respite of the shade was welcome at times. So a good portion of what turned out to be three hours there was spent walking around the Moors spotting Lepidoptera (another side effect of the career change as well I think in that I can't stay still inside a hide for ages, I need to be out there moving around. Being inside a hide feels like watching the world from a box - too removed from 'out there'). So out there it was in the glorious sunshine with eyes flitting up and down trying to catch the best of both birds and insects. Since getting more into the butterfly's and moths I sometimes think my head will fall off trying to look up for birds and down at the same time to see what is flitting around the undergrowth as well as in the air and tree tops.

Comma, Ringlet, Speckled Wood and Tortoiseshell Butterflies were in abundance along the pathways around the reserve, however today it was the better halves day to be photographing the butterflies and I only snapped one solitary shot of a damselfly from a distance.

The one other thing that sadly seems to be in abundance these days on the reserve is dog mess, which does seem to have become more prevalent since the trust started to promote Upton Warren more as one of it's selected premier reserves with more signage to the reserve and I guess more promotional material. What is a lovely place is becoming more and more spoilt by having to watch your step as you walk around unless you want your boots smelling of less than roses. It seems that the signage on the entrances informing the public of the SSSI status of the site and the no dog policy is having little effect, something that does need to be looked at. The trust now are heavily promoting and checking on the rule that to access the site you must be a member of the trust or pay a day permit fee. Well I can guess that the dog walkers are probably neither so a little more targeting needs to be done on this front as why pay a day fee to step in dog mess left behind from someone who is obviously not using the site as it is intended.

Anyway little grumble over from what otherwise was a pleasant visit to my home patch and tomorrow it is off to another part of the country chasing the Silver-studded blue butterfly before returning to complete an essay on the defence techniques of lepidoptera. After that it's sitting down to start a proposal for a management plan for an upland heathland restoration project, which will get me out there on the heathland undertaking field surveys.

Finally a quick long distance (again) snap of a Large skipper.