As other birders and bloggers have been noting it gets harder to motivate oneself with a rapidly diminishing number of birds. Side effects are that unless you twitch or at least travel to different birding sites the year list remains pitifully low. But also, for any given day out, the opportunities for close encounters with anything other than the commonest birds become a real rarity. For me the few standout birds over the last year or so were:-

Temminck' Stint - almost invisibly far away

White-rumped Sandpiper - just as bad

White-tailed Eagle - FFS, it's enormous but at 1500 metres still a brown dot in a tree on 50x mag!!

Bonaparte's Gull - 400 yds plus.

The ONLY close quality encounters were with the two Farlington Short-eared Owls early last winter and the ubiquitous Blashford Bittern earlier this year.

In the formative years it was possible to deal with waning enthusiasm by taking up ringing and later going abroad, although the latter only served to underline how dire things were back home; then photography, but just how many Blue Tit pics do you need!!

More recently focussing a little more on hoverflies etc helped to fill the gap but as all birders know nothing compares to the adrenaline rush of a good bird at point blank range. Sorry, no amount of extra wings or legs makes up for a quality avian!

But in the last few years even insects are becoming harder to find.  On today's sunny May day, butterflies probably totalled a dozen individuals of five species, dragonflies probably 20+ of five species.

And precious few bees and hoverflies!!

Anyway, minor rant over and normal service resumed

So, this week started with a local walk producing nothing better than Melangyna cincta and another Brachyopa spp on the hoverfly front. The heat is such that even the few larger insects are disappearing into shade under leaves.

A couple of Tachina fera were not unexpected but the first pair of Myopa testacea for the year (mating but still being blown around in the breeze whilst holding on for grim death)  soon flew off as did the day's only Conops spp. Firecrest was the only notable songster.

The next day, a chat in the Meadow Hide with DS passed the time while scanning for the Pink-footed Goose - which did not appear. He provided some useful info on Alver Valley, which I really must visit, and and that Wood Whites were on the wing in Surrey, and this was confirmed the next day by his tweets with pictures from Tugeley Wood. Only sighting of note was a gynandromorph Orange Tip with only one orange tip, the left wing being 'female white' apparently already photographed and notified to Butterfly Conservation by DH.

Today saw Keith and I doing the rounds and being entertained by the Kestrels feeding their young close by, three Hobbies hawking high over the reserve and later a Roe Deer in the middle of North Brooks. A female Cuckoo 'bubbled' and later an adult flashed by the tea terrace over lunch.

Two (male and female) Beautiful Demoiselles and plenty of Four-spotted Chasers were new this year and there were many more Broad-bodied Chasers today including powder-blue males. A spider strolling across Black Pond was presumably a Pirate Otter Spider (Piraticus) or thereabouts.

 MP's Black Wood Spotted Flycatchers weren't playing ball and so the day ended with feet up, choc ice in hand and watching the bee hotel residents coming and going!!