Caerlaverock

 

It's rare that we stay in Dumfries and don't visit the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust reserve at Caerlaverock. It's a wonderful place with a great range of habitats supporting loads of wildlife. It's famous for both wintering wildfowl and dragonflies. 

It has a lovely wildlife garden that's full of butterflies, in the photo below you can see a Painted Lady (at the top) and a Red Admiral with a Small White in the background

We were delighted to also see a Humming Bird Hawkmoth, though it didn't want to be photographed.

As we came out of the wildlife garden, we found a young hare, hiding in the grass

The birds we saw included Shovelers, recognisable by their weird shaped bills, the males weren't in breeding plumage, so not as easy to recognise from a distance as they otherwise would be. 

The aptly named Teal Pond was full of Teal

There were lots of Mallards  

and a few Mute Swans

 As well as the butterflies mentioned above, the insects we saw included Silver Y moth 

 

Common Hawker Dragonfly 

Common Darter Dragonfly (male in the photo below)

 

 

Long Hoverfly (Sphaerophoria sp)

 

Platycheirus sp hoverfly (the one in the photo below seems oddly interested in the Small White butterfly!) 

and a Noon Fly  

Grazing some of the fields were a number of Balwen sheep, a very distinctive breed of Welsh Mountain sheep