Mr and Ms Beautiful demoiselle

27 Wednesday May 2026

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I didn’t spend a lot of time looking for odonata species during my recent visit to Weymouth, partly due to the weather conditions – when it was sunny, there was almost always a strong cold wind blowing through the areas where I usually find dragonflies, but also because the RSPB has made the decision, despite the protests of very many people, not to spend money on maintaining many of the footpaths at both the Lodmoor and Radipole nature reserves, meaning some areas are already becoming inaccessible. (I won’t go in to my opinion about the RSPB here – suffice to say it couldn’t get much lower, and the organisation will never again receive any financial support from me.)

On the one afternoon the weather was favourable, I was exceedingly lucky to find several species that were my first sightings for 2026. The Blue-tailed and Red-eyed damselflies will be covered in future blogs, when/if I get more and better photos of them at home in south Wales, but I couldn’t resist sharing these images I did manage to get of the aptly named male (above) and female (below) Beautiful demoiselles (Calopteryx virgo) that were wonderfully entertaining as they flitted amongst the tall reeds along the edge of a path at Radipole. Such gorgeous creatures!

Bar-tailed godwits

26 Tuesday May 2026

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In a blog about Black-tailed godwits, after seeing a huge flock of them just off Cardiff Bay Barrage in February last year, I wrote:

We have two species of godwit in Britain, Black-tailed and Bar-tailed (Limosa lapponica), and, at first glance, they can be difficult to tell apart but, as you can see in some of my photos, the Black-tailed have broad white wing-bars and their white tails finish with a black band, hence their name.

Though we sometime see Bar-tailed godwits (Limosa lapponica) in south Wales, as they pass through during their spring and autumn migrations, I haven’t seen any locally since 2019, so it was wonderful to see them several times in Dorset, both at Lodmoor and along the shore line in front of the Wild Chesil Centre at Ferrybridge. In fact, early one morning, I took a seat on a small concrete slipway by the road at Ferrybridge and spent perhaps 30 minutes watching these two birds feeding. I was hoping they’d come closer as the tide came in but, just as they were getting nearer, a dog walker and his pet walked along the sand between me and the birds, scaring them further away.

One morning at Lodmoor, this single Bar-tailed godwit flew in, and was joined a short time later by two little Sanderlings – more very enjoyable birdwatching minutes were spent watching these birds as they foraged along the water’s edge.

Hoverfly: Parhelophilus species

25 Monday May 2026

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When I first saw these hoverflies basking on the leaves of tall reeds along the edge of a path at RSPB Radipole, I knew immediately they were something different, a species I hadn’t seen before. This was mostly due to their bright orange colour – they seemed almost to be glowing in the sunshine. I thought they were a species of Helophilus, as their body markings looked similar to Helophilus pendulus and H. trivittatus, but their orange gleam marked them out as something other.

I was wrong but close; these are a species of Parhelophilus, of which there are three species in Britain. One species, Parhelophilus consimilis, is rare and darker in colour, and the other two, P. frutetorum and P. versicolor, are so similar as to be very difficult to distinguish, one from the other.

If I had known what to look for – the male P. frutetorum has a small tubercle on the underside of its hind femur, I might have been able to get better photos that showed that area of the leg, but somehow I doubt it. And anyway, it’s not necessary to know the precise name of something to feel the pleasure of seeing it.

Horseshoe vetch

24 Sunday May 2026

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As it’s restricted to those areas in southern England where there is chalk and limestone, I hadn’t seen Horseshoe vetch (Hippocrepis comosa) until my recent visit to the Isle of Portland, or perhaps I should say that I hadn’t recognised it. The plant was, no doubt, growing all around me, especially when I explored the former quarries, but I hadn’t looked at it closely enough to realise it was different from the Bird’s-foot trefoil that it superficially resembles.

Both are members of the pea family, so the individual flowers are similar but the 5 to 12 individual flowers of Horseshoe vetch grow together in whorls, a structure that helps to identify them. I wondered whether this shape was the reason for their common name, but, in Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey notes that each flower develops into a pod ‘which breaks up into a number of horseshoe-shaped segments’.

As I noted in yesterday’s blog post, Horseshoe vetch is the larval plant for the Adonis blue butterfly (Polyommatus bellargus), which is why the populations of that butterfly are restricted to where the plant grows. The leaves of Horseshoe vetch are also used as a food plant by the larvae of the Chalkhill blue and Dingy Skipper butterflies, though the latter species uses several other plant species, meaning its distribution is not as restricted as the Adonis and Chalkhill blues.

NFY: Adonis blue

23 Saturday May 2026

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As the Adonis blue (Polyommatus bellargus) uses Horseshoe vetch (Hippocrepis comosa) as its larval food plant, it can only be found where that species of vetch grows, which in turn means the majority of this butterfly’s colonies are restricted to certain locations in southern England, specifically ‘in the core areas of chalk downland in Dorset, Wiltshire, Sussex and the Isle of Wight’, according to Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies. (Horseshoe vetch will feature in tomorrow’s blog post.)

The restriction imposed by its larval plant means I never see this butterfly in Wales, and so, last week, on the Isle of Portland, was only the fourth time I’d seen the stunning cobalt blue upper wings of the male Adonis blue.

And, as this was the very start of their 2026 season – there are two generations of adults each year, the first fly in May-June, the second in August-September – I only saw three individuals, all males. The females emerge a little later than the males, so, due to poor timing on my part, I’ve only once seen a female Adonis blue, back in August 2019, during a visit to the Malling Down Reserve in East Sussex. Though I already have another trip to Weymouth and Portland booked, that will be in July, so I will once again miss seeing any females. I intend trying to remedy that omission next year, as I would very much like to be present when more of these little stunners are in flight, both male and female.

Pipits feeding their families

22 Friday May 2026

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As I mentioned in Tuesday’s blog (Skylarks and Stonechats), the area around the Ferrybridge Wild Chesil Centre is rich in birdlife at this time of year, the lush wildflowers and thick scrub obviously providing a rich diet of lurking insects for breeding birds to nourish their young. As well as the Skylarks and Stonechats, a healthy population of Meadow pipits also breeds hereabouts, and I caught this adult with a beak full of foraged food, just waiting for me to pass by before heading in to the undergrowth to its nest.

Later that day, as I sat on a boulder eating my lunchtime snack at Portland Bill, I was entertained by another member of the pipit family busily gathering titbits to feed its family. This Rock pipit looked gorgeous as it sat on a rock, surrounded by the delicate pinks of the lush flowering Thrift, waiting for a family of humans, who were clambering around the remains of a former quarry, to move away before flying down to its well-concealed nest to satisfy, if only momentarily, the hungry tummies of its chicks.

Gambolling Hares

21 Thursday May 2026

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On Saturday 9 May, knowing the site would quickly become busy with dog-walkers and other visitors, I caught an early morning bus from Weymouth town centre to Ferrybridge for a wander around that part of Chesil Beach. I was scanning the water’s edge of the Fleet lagoon with my binoculars, checking for any waders or shore birds, when I noticed movement amongst the stones on the opposite side of the water. At first I thought it was an off-lead dog but quickly realised the creature was not moving as a dog would.

A second animal appeared behind the first and they began to run across the stones, chasing each other. Looking at the length of their legs and the size of their long floppy ears, I soon realised these were Brown hares (Lepus europaeus).

As they’re usually found living on farm fields and in grassland, I was amazed to see these handsome mammals in this seemingly harsh environment, but the website for the Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Wild Chesil Centre confirms that Brown hares live and breed on the shingle at Chesil Beach. There is certainly a wide variety of vegetation in the local wildflowers for the hares to feed on, and the stones would be good for heat retention in cold weather, as well as providing excellent camouflage for the hares once they were hunkered down. So, perhaps this was not as harsh an environment as I had initially thought.

At the same time as I was moving around behind the Wild Chesil Centre buildings to try to get better views of the hares, they were gambolling across the shore-side vegetation, getting closer to the Centre, so we were eventually no more than about 20 metres apart. It was fabulous to watch the hares up close, but then a couple of people arrived and let their large barking dogs off their leads, causing the hares to race off across the shingle to safety.

Surprise Small blues

20 Wednesday May 2026

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I had only ever seen a Small blue butterfly (Cupido minimus) twice before my recent trip to Weymouth, the first time back in the summer of 2018 during a visit to a friend in East Sussex (see Small and blue, 27 July 2018) and the second time in 2019, during a bird club trip to Salisbury Plain (Birding on Salisbury Plain, 13 May 2019). And I hadn’t expected to see them on this recent trip but Nature played a blinder!

I was over the moon to see Small blues three days in a row, all on the Isle of Portland but all in locations where I never expected to find them. The first was on Friday 8 May in King Barrow Quarry, where I was amazed to spot three in one small area, a little colony.

The second was the following day, Saturday the 9th, in Tout Quarry, this time a single butterfly that just appeared on the path below me as if by magic.

And the third, on Sunday 10th, once again appeared as if conjured up out of thin air, this time on the grass below the National Coastwatch building near the coastal path that runs along Portland’s west cliffs.

The one time I actually went looking for Small blues, and spent two hours walking almost every small path through the Broadcroft Butterfly Reserve, where these butterflies are supposed to live, I saw none. Which only made me even more grateful to have experienced the previous three totally unexpected sightings.

Skylarks and Stonechats

19 Tuesday May 2026

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The area around the Wild Chesil Centre at Ferrybridge in Weymouth is alive with small birds in the spring and summer months. As soon as you arrive, your ears will be filled with the joyous sound of displaying Skylarks, the trills and warbles of their lengthy song flights audible even above the almost constant sound of cars passing on the busy road to the Isle of Portland. And, as this area is also busy with human traffic, the birds are more tolerant than usual of approaching people walking the tracks behind the Centre’s car park and on the opposite side of the road, along the well-vegetated edge of Hamm Beach. In fact, the colours of the Skylark pictured below blended so well with the stony path that I was almost upon the bird before it scuttled a few yards ahead of me, its close proximity providing a nice photo opportunity.

The Stonechats in this area were also a delight to watch.

Mum and Dad Stonechat (that’s the male above) were perched up on the tops of low shrubs, making their usual contact calls (like two stones being knocked together, hence their name), and, when I spotted them, I also noticed these two youngsters, sitting watching the goings on. These, presumably, were the first brood of the year, now fledged and able to fend for themselves, which means the parents will be able to move on to raising another one, possibly two more broods before the summer ends. Busy little chats!

NFY: Wall

18 Monday May 2026

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My decision to head to Weymouth and Portland for a week from the 7th to the 14th of May was a last minute one; I had booked somewhere else but the weather there was forecast to be mostly wet so I cancelled that and headed south to Dorset instead. I hadn’t checked which butterfly species I might see there; I just knew that if it rained in Weymouth, I could always go birding.

When the Dorset weather turned out mostly dry, if not always particularly sunny, I knew I had to head to the locations on the Isle of Portland where I’ve previously found butterflies, and one of the first I saw there was the Wall (Lasiommata megera). Checking now, I see that the first generation adults usually emerge in late April – early May, so my timing was perfect.

Most of the Walls I spotted, in Tout and King Barrow quarries, at the Broadcroft Butterfly Reserve, and along the coastal path above the west cliffs, were constantly active, the majority males flying back and forth in search of females but, occasionally, one would pause long enough and close enough for me to get a few photos. These are they.