May 24th - the Outfall and a brief walk round the Valley

Barking Outfall

I started the morning at the Outfall with a mind to have a look at the Gull colony, and it particular try and re locate the Great Black Backed Gull that had shown breeding behavior on a previous visit. The trouble here is that you are always going to be at a distance from the Jetty, even if you could get closer, there are disturbance issues and the Gulls would be all over you. Due to this, there are many areas that remain unseen with perhaps 25% of the jetty structures not recorded.

Herring Gull on nest

Waiting for grub

Tucked into a bush

Larger Lesser Black Backed Gull young

I was unable to locate the possible Great Black Backed nest site, although an adult bird was seen duffing up a Cormorant with a Flattie.

Great Black Backed Gull and Cormorant

I was able to make a count of breeding Gulls, results below

Lesser Black Backed Gull – 71 pairs

Herring Gull – 42 pairs

Many of these already have young at the small stage, also as mentioned above, this is certainly an undercount with many areas unrecorded.

The Valley

We are fast approaching the time of Dragons and Butterflies with migration starting to drop off, consequently I decided on a brief walk around Berwick Glades with the vetch starting to show.

Possible Brown Argus

Burnett Companion

Green Hairstreak

Small Tortoiseshell

Common Blues were seemingly everywhere mostly males and a single Holly Blue was seen. Also Blue Tailed Damsels were abundant along with a few Commons.

Common Blue

Small Heath

Red Eyed Damselfly

I also came across a possible Brown Argus, very hard to be definite with this species but this one looked a good candidate.

Also seen were

Burnett Companions 11

Green Hairstreak 1

Small Heath 9

Small Tortoiseshell 1

Red Eyed Damselfy 10

Four Spot Chaser 4

Hairy Dragonfly 1