Brimstone butterfly enjoyed the winter sunshine
Paul Steven’s weekly Wildlife Sightings column appears in the Chichester Observer, the Littlehampton Gazette, the Bognor Regis Observer, the Shoreham Herald and the Worthing Herald.
Monday 23 Dec:
DURING A WEEK of weather extremes gave us some interesting sightings at Arundel Wetland Centre. I arrived on Tuesday morning to see a goshawk flying over the small reedbed along the boardwalk entrance to our visitor centre. The large hawk, with its telltale red eyes and white eyebrow, was being mobbed by a crow as it flew over the reserve.
On Wednesday the Arun Riverlife exhibit had its first shoveler on the water. The male spent most of the day sieving mud through its spatulate bill hunting for invertebrates in the shallows. A little grebe was also on the water amid the armada of coots, mallards, tufted ducks, and Canada geese that entertain visitors on the lake outside the gallery windows of the visitor centre. A kingfisher has been showing brilliantly, visiting a regular fishing perch on the large willow to the left of the gallery.
On Friday I had my most unusual sighting of the week - a male brimstone butterfly! Brimstones spend the winter as adults in a dormant state. The sun was shining after a cool morning start so this one must have thought spring had come early.
After vicious rains on Saturday the sun put in an appearance on Sunday. Between the Ramsar and Sand Martin hides we had five grey herons, six cormorants, and one shag fishing the waters. There were nine shoveler, six pochard, four shelduck, 17 gadwall and 28 teal. Nine lapwing were on the wet grassland and the island while three Snipe were visible along edge of the reeds.
The Lapwing hide was a little quieter in the morning with only one grey heron, amid the pheasants, mallards and moorhens but had good numbers of teal in the afternoon.
