Prestwick.........best show in town, bar none.

I've visited Prestwick Carr (without the s) five times in the last seven days and have no images worth showing anybody but i don't care. My lens is only 300mm and i realised early on in my visits that one of the owls was going to have to perch or come quite close to have anything half decent. It has happened on one or two occasions but always in less than decent light for photography but the spectacle of these fantastic birds "doing their thing" has been brilliant. I think it tells you how tricky capturing these birds has been by the lack of crisp images being exhibited on the net by what has been a bank of big lenses most evenings.
Yesterday before my visit around 4.30p.m. i met up with Mr. Cheviot for a leg stretch and parked by Rumbling Kern and proceeded up to Craster and back via Howick Scar and Howick Hall. A beautiful day (again) but very little of interest along the coast understandably given the weather conditions for the last few weeks. On arrival at Craster i left Jeff for 45 minutes contemplating his navel and the harbour while i nipped up to the Arnold Memorial Nature Reserve expecting the Wryneck or Bluethroat that it promises on the information plaque as you enter. What i got was strange. Sitting there in the dappled light of the trees with a steady fall of "autumn" leaves fluttering down all around me, blackberries ready to pick on all the brambles and a full chorus of Robins singing their hearts out but i was like a summers day. It was very tranquil mind.
Having dropped Jeff off mid afternoon on our return i continued on to Banks' Pond to have a couple of hours before the Carr. I had done this also on Wednesday and had been rewarded with sightings of Common Darters, a couple of what i thought were very pale Emerald Damselflies ( but they didn't have there wings at 45 degrees) and fly through by Hawkers on half a dozen occasions. One of the Hawkers had to have been a Migrant Hawker i reckoned by its size but i never got a clear view of markings on any of the six occasions. While walking the coastal path earlier in the day i had sightings of quite a number of butterflies including numerous Small Tortoiseshell and Red Admirals and a brace of Speckled Wood but at the pond a speck of blue moving in the grasses caught my eye. When i went over it was a female Common Blue.I haven't seen a blue butterfly for ages.