A month ago I had to cancel a visit I had hoped to make to a reserve called Fishlake Meadows near Romsey with a rspb birding group. However, with another sunny day forecast, I decided I would make the trip myself to find out what the reserve had to offer. There had been recent reports of ospreys and hobbies so having seen neither so far this year, it would be something to look out for.
I was at the reserve by just after eight, when the gates are unlocked ( though I'm not sure if the time is adhered to as another visitor had been there since six o'clock and they were already open!) The first part of the reserve follows a path by side of an old barge canal and here there were numerous cettis warblers calling. Then you can take a path into the centre of the reed bed overlooking a lake from a screen. Reed and sedge warblers were singing; I also heard a cuckoo, and saw a great white egret, marsh harrier, red kite, buzzard and kestrel. Sadly no hobby or osprey during my visit.
Although the morning had been slightly cloudy with a cool breeze at times, by lunch time the clouds had cleared and temperatures rising so I took a different route home, stopping off at a butterfly nature reserve at Boscombe Down West. This is a 1 km long disused railway line alongside some ministry of defence land, and is bordered by chalk embankments which attract a range of butterfly species taking advantage of the sheltered environment. For anyone in a wheelchair this is an ideal place to spot butterflies as it is level and easy to access.
The butterflies I saw were mostly on the sunny side of the track, and provided a range of species, although not in particularly large numbers. I was pleased to find my first Painted Lady of the year, this was a species missed out on last year. However my sighting was only brief, with the butterfly stopping on a flower a only a few seconds before rising and disappearing through some wire fencing and over a bank. I also saw a couple of Adonis blues, another first for the year, together with small and common blues, brown argus, grizzled skippers, brimstones, small heath and a green hairstreak. There were a lot of white butterflies but none stopped to enable identification.