A sunny morning with hardly any breeze. I chose to complete the first early season breeding bird survey by walking a transect down the middle of the site.
It turned out that I wasn't the only person surveying wildlife today. I finally met Sam MacVie who was teamed up with a colleague to count butterflies for HOEF. My own survey only lasted as long as it took me to make my way to the flash field. As I approached, the Curlew which has been here for the last week flew in, and this time I managed to take a couple of record shots.
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| Curlew |
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| Curlew |
It chose to settle about as far away as was possible in the flash field, but I would say it was a female based on the extremely long bill.
Scanning the rest of the flash field revealed that only one pair of Avocets remain, while three Lapwings, eight Teal, four Black-headed Gulls, and a Snipe were also present.
As Sam and colleague reappeared, so too did some newly emerged spring butterflies. An Orange-tip and at least two Speckled Woods. Great to see again.
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| Orange-tip |
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| Speckled Wood |
Despite scanning every hedgerow I could not winkle out any passage migrants, except perhaps a couple of Willow Warblers.
But sunshine always lifts the spirits.
Postscript: Moth news. The good thing about moths is that they come in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes, and sometimes you can get a lifer whilst lounging on the sofa watching the telly. So it was that this afternoon my eye was drawn to a speck on the front window. It suddenly took off and fluttered in a mothy way so I abandoned Pointless, grabbed a pot and popped outside to nab it.
On closer inspection I decided it was from the group Mompha and being a rather drab one I assumed it would be subbistrigella a species I have recorded in the garden before. After persuading it to enter a smaller pot I couldn't make much of it through a hand lens. It was extremely active so I had to calm it down by putting it in the fridge for five minutes. This allowed me just enough time to take one (not very good) photo of it before it resumed its enthusiastic exploration of the pot. I decided to let it go, still suspecting it was something I'd seen before.
However, a closer look at the photograph and at the books suggested it might actually be a moth called Mompha langiella. I could imagine the moth recorder pointedly asking me if I had retained a specimen, which of course I hadn't.
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| Mompha langiella |
Fortunately a thing called Twitter exists, and I follow a chap whose moniker is UK Moth ID. He knows his stuff, and when I sent him the picture he concurred with my identification.
So another moth sneaks onto the garden list.
I was tempted to put the trap out, and as a result caught an additional 13 moths. The full list including the langiella was:
Brindled Beauties are large and quite spectacular moths. One was in the trap, and the other on the wall of the house. Here is a picture of the latter.
Brindled Beauty
Who says moths are dull?
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