Sunday July 13 - Morton Bagot (and a whole heap of Friday night moths)

 Well this is a bit different. I have been unable to fix the photograph issue. It's a shame my prose isn't up to much.

Dave joined me today. Another hot one. We trudged around the patch with limited optimism. The best moment came an hour in, when I heard a Grasshopper Warbler singing from the Chat field. I called Dave over and while we listened in vain for another burst, I noticed that a crow flying some distance away was actually an accipiter. We watched in silence as it headed for Bannams. We both had the impression that it didn't look right for Sparrowhawk because it was actually a Goshawk. Presumably a male as it looked Crow-sized. 

The nearest flash has too narrow a muddy edge to provide much interest to passing waders, and we counted just four Green Sandpipers and 16 Lapwings. The only other surprise was a dead Pygmy Shrew on the path.

Which brings me to Friday night. Obviously it was warm and I was expecting a lot of moths. I take my hat off to proper moth-ers who tend their traps all night. I managed about fifteen minutes, most of which was spent trying to encourage a Hornet to leave the trap. I did grab a few moths, including what turned out to be a Southern Apple Moth, quite a local micro moth no doubt associating with our apple tree.

The following morning I emerged at 04.00 to find the box full of moths, mostly micros, and a dozen wasps queuing up for a free breakfast. I decided to intervene, remove the light source and drag the trap into the utility room. 

Five hours later I had counted 440 moths of 79 species. These included 33 new for the year, and at least four new for the garden. The new ones were the aforementioned Southern Apple Moth Recurvaria nanella, three Lesser-spotted Pinions (the only macros which were new), a Brassy Y Argyresthia goedartella, and a Dark Blackthorn Tip Moth Argyresthia albistria.

Two of the macros were garden seconds, a Least Carpet and the migrant Dark Sword-grass.

Throughout the morning I was hampered by a shortage of small pots and an excess of micro-moths. Several were too difficult for me to identify under the pressure of time and I suspect several potential new moths were written off for that reason.

I'll always prefer birding but my garden moth list (now in it's eighth year) is now 499, considerably more than the number of birds I've seen in Britain over the last fifty years.

Thursday July 10 - Earlswood Lakes

I'm afraid Blogspot is playing up again. It's the old uploading photos problem. I have been tempted to throw in the towel, but I guess I can limp on without photos while I try to sort things out.

I was up at the crack of dawn this morning and headed for Earlswood in the hope that something might have arrived in spite of the clear night and wall to wall sunshine.

It was pretty quiet. The only wader was a single Common Sandpiper, and the best of the rest were a Little Egret which departed to the north and a Ring-necked Parakeet calling from trees behind Windmill Pool.

Tuesday July 8 - A very brief appearance of a Humming-bird Hawk-Moth in the garden.

The brevity of this video is explained by the flicker of brown after the moth disappears from view. A House Sparrow flashed through the screen and the moth was seen no more.

R.I.P Humming-bird Hawk-moth. 😢

Tuesday July 8 - Morton Bagot

 Any thoughts that Morton Bagot might have joined in with the Black-tailed Godwit fest were quickly extinguished this morning. The farmer probably had one eye on the weather forecast when he ensured that the nearest flash would flood once more. As a result it contained just the Shelduck family (nine birds in all) and two Green Sandpipers. 

So the birding was pretty hopeless, but fortunately the morning was saved by a dragonfly. To be precise a Willow Emerald damselfly. This species is a relatively recent colonist which has spread north-west through England, reaching Morton Bagot about three years ago. I managed to see one about two years ago, but missed my chance to photograph it. This morning I put that right.

The key features are the long thin abdomen and the white dots on the end of the wings. It sounds as though they are now established locally, with singles at Earlswood last year and Middle Spernal recently.

It saved my morning though.

Monday July 7 - Morton Bagot and Earlswood Lakes

Yesterday was a day of showers, and the forecast was enough to put Dave off. In fact, my visit to Morton Bagot was largely a dry affair until I got caught out by a thunderstorm ten minutes before the end.

There were some good signs. A Grasshopper Warbler was singing near the dragonfly pools (although I couldn't see it), and two parties of Swifts totalling 44 birds headed south-west. Autumn really is here as far as the birds are concerned, and to emphasise the point I found that there are now 10 Green Sandpipers on the nearest flash as well as a Little Ringed Plover and a Kingfisher. 

But the real action happened this morning. I happened to awake early, and found it had just stopped raining. Surely Earlswood would be worth a punt? I decided to go, and I'm glad I did.

The first wader to claim my attention was a Redshank at the corner of Windmill Pool by the causeway. Despite being disturbed by early morning dog walkers it kept returning to the same spot, and I can't help suspecting that it's the same bird as was seen on June 12 and once since, though this begs the question where has it been in the meantime. Perhaps it is a new bird.

But this was just the hors d'oeuvre. After making my way across the causeway I scanned the shore off Wood Lane car park and discovered two summer plumaged Black-tailed Godwits. These were my first this year, and also a site tick.

I put the news out and managed to complete a circuit of Engine Pool without spooking them, but despite this only Janet managed to arrive in time to see them before they went. Unfortunately no-one seems to have witnessed their departure so I don't know which way they went, but presumably it was southwards away from their breeding grounds in Iceland.

I didn't have very long to scan for other birds but noticed at least seven Sand Martins and a few Swifts, both species which tend to leave early.

What a brilliant morning.

PS: I've subsequently discovered that there was a mass arrival of Black-tailed Godwits across West Midlands waters today, with 29 at Belvide Res, 28 at Upton Warren, four at Upper Bittell Res, and others at Middleton RSPB, Ladywalk, and Branston. And that's just the one's I've read about. I love it when "your birds" are part of a bigger picture. The only down side is that I wasn't able to get to Morton Bagot, so that will have gone unwatched.

Saturday July 5 - All about moths

Sorry moth-haters, the birding since Tuesday has been limited to one visit to Earlswood Lakes where, to be fair, the water level on Engine Pool is low enough to support waders. Unfortunately I saw none at all on Thursday, and nothing else better than a Whitethroat.

So that just leaves moths. I've now handed back the Clearwing pheromone lures, but before I did so I decided to try once more for Orange-tailed Clearwing. The result, as with last time was Yellow-legged Clearwing, one in the pot and one trying to get in. The one difference was that this time I devised a way of getting a nice photograph before it warmed up and flew off.

Yellow-legged Clearwing

A day later a much smaller moth flew into our bathroom during the day. A typical grain of rice-sized moth which looked vaguely novel to my naked eye, but put it under a lens and it transforms into something I'd never seen before. It was an Italian Bark Moth Metalampra italica, a species which was first recorded in Britain as recently as 2003. But things move fast in moth circles. They arrived in Warwickshire in 2017, and eight years later they are reasonably established.

Italian Bark Moth

That brings us to last night's moth-trapping session and 100 moths of 29 species. As is typical of this time of the year these included a good proportion which were new for the year, including a Shark which was my first for four years.

Shark

Nice though this was, another moth interested me much more.

One of the odd things about wildlife is how inappropriate many names are. In particular the term "Garden" implies ubiquity and dullness. But consider the two macro-moths and one bird prefaced by that word. The bird is Garden Warbler, a species I've never seen in my  garden and probably never will. They are not even all that common, although they are certainly dowdy.

The moths are Garden Tiger and Garden Dart. The problem here is time. When they were named it was fair enough, they were perfectly common in gardens fifty years ago. Since then their numbers have plummeted. Until this morning I'd never seen either, and had pretty much given up hope. Garden Tigers are spectacular looking, and I'd love to see one.

But it was the other one, Garden Dart, the extremely plain brown one, which I found this morning. Not that I knew what it was. I suspected it was something new, although I wouldn't have been surprised if it had just been a worn example of something familiar.

Garden Dart

It seemed too early in the year for Square-spot Rustic, a familiar species it vaguely reminded me of. I decided to try the Obsidentify app on it, and that suggested White-line Dart (70%) and Garden Dart (30%). I peered at on-line images trying to convince myself that the app could see something I couldn't, and eventually put some images on social media asking for assistance.

It turned out that the app was wrong (again), and it was indeed a Garden Dart. Now pretty scarce in Warwickshire and everywhere else, the kind of moth so dull-looking that it risks putting people off moths altogether, but maybe the only one I will ever see.

Hopefully I'll be better prepared if another does blunder into my trap one day.

Tuesday July 1 - Morton Bagot

 With the breeding season now winding down, I've decided to abandon my Circle wandering for the next four months to concentrate on watery habitats in the hope of some passage waders.

I was at Morton Bagot at 04:45 this morning, mainly to try to avoid the heatwave. I also had Water Rail on my mind, hoping for a second appearance and maybe some chicks. Well dream on, there was no sign of the Rail.

On the positive side the nearest flash looks decent again, and I counted eight Green Sandpipers, three Lapwings and an adult Little Ringed Plover. These are three of the four baseline waders here (the other being Snipe), anything else would be a win. At least Green Sandpiper numbers have doubled since Sunday.

There is much to be said for getting out early. The passerines in the hedgerows seemed to be in abundance and included a very brief Grasshopper Warbler, while the meadows were full of Knapweed in full bloom and many other flowering plants which I struggle to name. This morning I used my app to identify Lady's Bedstraw, though I've probably seen it here before.

I arrived home just after 07.05 and got a Whatsapp message that there were three Great White Egrets at Earlswood. John Oates had found them, so after checking Lyn was still fast asleep I jumped back in the car. Half way there I learned that they had flown off (and later turned up at Marsh Lane GP) so I returned home.

One final footnote; yesterday I had another go with some of John's Clearwing lures in the garden. Currant Clearwing appears to be absent, but I was successful in attracting a Lunar Hornet Moth and even managed to photograph it out of the pot before it flew off.

A very impressive wasp-mimic.