Plumstone

From Roger Mathias - Plumstone mountain this evening - new cuckoo behaviour for me, a single bird(surely a female) ‘quartered’ the centre section of the heath for over 10 minutes, circling and gliding, to the point where I was reminded of a pipistrelle bat, the same route was being repeated! All the time with 3-4 meadow pipits/linnets buzzing around. Eventually a slow long glide took the bird out of sight to the north. Also to the north of the site, the boundary fence wires were dotted in many places with fledged stonechats, linnets and meadow pipits. From a distance into the low sun, like crotchets and quavers on a Vaughan Williams score. A family of ‘cronking’ ravens provided the base notes for a few minutes. There were 5-6 pairs of painted lady butterflies zooming around on the south side of the rock, out of the wind, with a very confused red admiral in the middle of the party for a while.