Well it’s been a bit quiet
on the blog this week but I feel it’s now time to catch up with the last few
days. It’s been a rather nice week now
the cold wind has disappeared. Buddy and I have been to Stockton Cuttings
once or twice a day on the search for emerging Grizzled and Dingy
skippers. No joy at all and we also met
up with one of the Warwickshire recorders who hadn’t seen any either.
On our visit there on
Friday I met a flower girl – actually a lady a lot older than me - who is into wild
flowers. I took the opportunity to find
out a few things including the differences between Oxslips and Cowslips, and
also the differences between Wild Strawberries and Barren Strawberries.
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| Oxslips are a hybrid between Primrose and Cowslip and the flowers hang all round the top of the stem |
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Whereas Cowslip flowers
hang one side of the stem
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Grizzled Skipper
caterpillars feed on Wild and Barren Strawberries and (obvious really), Barren
Strawberries don’t bear fruit. She also
explained that the petals are separate on the Barren Strawberry. It turned out she has lived on a working boat
nearly all her life as well as being a botanist. She and her husband used to have a butty – an
engineless boat that used to be towed by the working boat to carry extra
freight on a boat journey. The plan had
been to restore the butty and as soon as it was done they would travel the
canal system together on both the boats; unfortunately he died just before their great adventure so she has sold the butty but remains living on the working boat.
A lot of butterflies were
on the wing during the week and I saw our first female Orange Tip of the
year. Amazing camouflage on the
underwings.
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| Underside of Orange Tip |
About ½ mile from where we
have been moored is a country store which has a Victorian post box still in
use. I checked on the Waymarking
Geocaching site and it was one that hadn’t been recorded before in their list
of Queen Victoria letter boxes so I wrote an entry for them and got it
accepted.- sad eh?
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| VR post box in near doorway |
On Saturday it was time to
move home as we had been in the same spot for 14 days. We cruised to Stockton and moored outside The
Boat Inn.
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| Boat Inn on left. We are furthest boat on right in front of a Kiwi couple who also liveaboard |
We took the opportunity to
visit Stockton Cutting and we were fortunate this time – Karen spotted a Dingy
Skipper first and then found this mating pair.
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| Mating Dingy Skippers - first day of adult lfe as well! |
We found seven in all and
one Grizzled Skipper. We couldn’t get a
decent picture of the Grizzled.
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| Karen photographing the copulators whilst Buddy sleeps |
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| Freshly emerged Dingy Skipper |
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| Dingy Skipper with outstretched wings |
We reported the sightings
to the Warwickshire recorder who was really pleased with our finds.
We have noticed that Buddy
is finding the heat a bit wearing compared to previous years – maybe he’s just
getting older and more sensible and realises that running around just makes him
hotter.
We got back from our
butterflying and had lunch before setting off down the Stockton flight. As we were casting off a couple passed us on
nb Fullerdreams (their surname is Fuller) and we agreed to lock down together. They were a pleasant couple who moor in
Uxbridge for the winter and cruise for six months of the year. They kept laughing at Buddy lying down at
each lock.
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| Poor Buddy seems to have forgotten how to cope with heat |
We took on water at a
water point out in the middle of nowhere near the hamlet of Bascote. It was so peaceful that we reversed back
after filling up and decided to make this our next mooring spot for a while. It is now less than 10 miles for Karen to
drive to work which is good too.
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| Looking south from our mooring for the next week or so |
These are the ten locks we went down today.
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