I visited a nature reserve south of Leuven over the weekend and was surprised to find this sleepy, second-year Night Heron sitting out in the open. The bird has been present at the reserve since 24 May but hadn't been reported for over two weeks so I wasn't expecting to see it, especially in the middle of the day, which is way past its bedtime. This was only my third in Belgium and the first since 2013 as it is a very rare breeding species here. Yesterday, I made another attempt at finding Cranberry Fritillary at a different reserve in Belgian Luxembourg. The weather was not great for butterflies, however, although I did eventually see Marbled Fritillary, lots of Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries plus another, which may well have been Cranberry but just didn't stop long enough for me to tell. There were Red-backed Shrikes everywhere and it was nice to see lots of Siskins, which I only usually get to see during winter. Originally, I was going to walk there and back from Libramont train station (roughly 6km one-way) but, once there, I decided to continue on to the next train station instead and ended up hiking 20km! The only new butterfly for the year was this lovely Silver-washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia).
