Prees Heath and Whixall Moss

Report by Keith Fowler

Liz, Graham and I travelled to Prees Heath to view Silver-studded-blue emergence, and to Whixall Moss to view  Large heath, Argent and Sable and White-faced darter. We only saw one of these targets but we had an enjoyable day!!

It was cool, damp and breezy as I collected Graham from home and Liz from Apley Park where she had spent a wet night moth trapping. At 8am we arrived at the Butterfly Conservation site, Prees Heath, where we met Stephen Lewis, the warden and about six others who had turned out for the guided walk.
 

Although the rain held off for most of the time we were there it remained cool and breezy which was bad news for emergent Silver-studded blues but good news for viewing the emerged blues as they were still roosting which made them very easy to view.



Stephen pointed out several places where the moths were roosting. Eventually we got our eyes in and were able to locate them for ourselves.

After 90 minutes or so of searching for emergent butterflies we abandoned our search. So our first failure! It was not a wasted journey. We had the chance to get close to around 50 Silver-studded blues; we found other larvae – Mullein and Burnet; and saw very recently emerged Chaffinch chicks.

Failure number two occurred before we left Prees Heath when Stephen let Graham know that Argent and Sable were no longer flying at Whixall Moss. Also it had started to rain so we visited the local Transport café to decide our next move.

Refreshed by tea, coffee and excellent bacon sandwiches we travelled on to Whixall Moss, excellently navigated by Graham (apart from a rather dodgy short-cut).

There is quite a long walk to get from the car park to the moss along a well vegetated lane. At the start of the lane we were greeted by a couple of Swallows who posed for photographs. Here is one of them:



The lane yielded lots of butterflies, mainly Ringlets, and a few moths. I heard a Grasshopper warbler. As we watched the Ringlets one disappeared as it was grabbed in mid-air by a speeding swallow. We were in for a good session … or so we thought. When we got to the area of the moss it was blowing a gale. A passing bird-watcher told us that it was too windy for Hobbies and there was not much about. Such a gloomy forecast never deters the folk of WFV.

He was right, there was not much about, but, there was not ”nothing”. There was one blue damselfly but no dragonflies – so failure number three.

As we walked along Liz pounced and caught a Large heath – SUCCESS. Eventually we saw about half a dozen of these butterflies.




As we made our way back Liz pounced again and captured this moth



A Purple-bordered gold, a Nationally Scarce B moth (id confirmed by Tony Jacques).

After a late lunch by the canal we returned home … and the sun came out.
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