May 2018 - Part 2
23rd May 2018 - (Wednesday, Szerda)
Golden Oriole - Scarce Swallowtail - Lesser Whitethroat - Small Heath = not photographed.
24th May 2018 - (Thursday, Csütörtök)
25th May 2018 - (Friday, Péntek)
This afternoon I paid a short visit to the SQ as we'd had thunder storms and persistant rain since last night. On arrival, I was pleased to see that water was flowing into the channel and the SQ, but the waterfall was only of small to medium size. This probably means that most rainwater has been soaked-up by the dry and thirsty Pipis-hegy airfield area. Exploration of the site revealed: NO water in RB1, NO water forming the Coffee Pool, and just a small amount of water in RB2 and RB3. No water was found in the reedbed area. I saw three Roman Snails on the pathways, and all survived my wanderings. 'Achim the Terrible' was not at his house when I arrived, but his van (the yellow peril) was parked outside when I left the site. Before departure I walked up the airfield road to check how the road repairs had affected our irrigation project. Overall, it looks like the repairs have helped to bring water to our side of the road, which will be good when we have a decent 'rainy season'.
26th May 2018 - (Saturday, Szombat)
Today's visit was only expected to be routine, but it ended up much more notable than that. The reason was, after monitoring the site for many years, the first caterpillars of the Southern Festoon were discovered. Over the years we have seen one or two adult Southern Festoons at the site each Spring/Summer, but this year we saw more of them, and for a longer time span. In addition, this year we have a bigger spread of the foodplant, Birthwort, and maybe these factors combined have resulted in our first-ever larvae. Other notables today were 4 Marbled Fritillary (two of which became a mating pair), a male Large Copper, a few male Adonis Blue, and the Red-backed Shrike was, once again, posing on the bushes.
28th May 2018 - (Monday, Hétfő)
29th May 2018 - (Tuesday, Kedd)
Brimstone (male), Painted Lady, Large White, Cuckoo (calling), Stag Beetle (male, in flight, over rim), Buzzard,
30th May 2018 - (Wednesday, Szerda)
31st May 2018 - (Thursday, Csütörtök)
My SQ day started at local supermarket Lidl, where, at last, I found a 'grabber' to pick up rubbish from in and around our site. It cost 1499 forints, which is about 4 GBP. Again, there were lots of butterfly species in and around the site. These included: Blue-spot Hairstreak (about 4), Sloe Hairstreak (many), Pearly Heath (many), Small Heath, Chestnut Heath, Large White, Small White, Eastern Bath White (2), Meadow Brown, Sooty Copper (male), Twin-spot Fritillary (6), Marbled Fritillary (6), Silver-studded Blue (several), Short-tailed blue (male), Common Blue, Adonis Blue (several males), Queen of Spain Fritillary, Wood White, Small Skipper, Essex Skipper, Marbled White, and Comma (dead) = 22 species. In addition, I was able to locate 2 of the 3 caterpillars of the Southern Festoon. Birds included Tree Sparrow, Yellowhammer (male), and a calling Cuckoo. The temperature was about 27 degs.