Sunday September 26

Dave was back from his holiday in the south-west, and for the first hour of our circuit of the patch I was entertained with stories of Wrynecks found and Shrikes etc seen in Cornwall and Scilly. This may not have helped us find anything at Morton Bagot and it was probably a case of back to earth with a bump for him.

Nevertheless the birding conditions were OK, cloudy with a light south-westerly, brightening later, and we managed to halt the conversation long enough to record a steady passage of Meadow Pipits, and Swallows heading south.

The first time the camera came out was for a beetle. A fairly common species called Devil's Coach-Horse was crawling across the access road, no doubt hunting for something to kill and eat. I can't remember seeing one here before so it got more attention than it probably warranted.

We eventually reached the weedy field which contained a couple of Stonechats and Tony, who was having a successful morning catching Meadow Pipits. About 30 or so were landing in and around a cage trap, at least one perching on it, but apparently quite a number of the pipits would walk into the trap and be unable to exit until they were extracted and ringed. At least four Skylarks were also in the field, but he hadn't caught any by the time we arrived. 

The totals ringed today were Meadow Pipit 19, Blackcap 6, and Chiffchaff 1.

One of the Meadow Pipits which hadn't been caught.

We left him to it, and tried our luck at the flash field. Here we counted 37 Lapwings, three Green Sandpipers, 14 Snipe, and 32 Teal. In other words, the same old stuff that's been there for the last fortnight.

On quiet visits like this I'm glad that I'm also into moths. Friday night was pretty mild for the time of year, and my garden trap again caught 40 moths. This time however, they included two species I had not seen before.

The first was a reasonably common macro moth called Brown-spot Pinion. It amazes me that after three years I'm still recording new moths which aren't even all that rare.

Brown-spot Pinion

My Moths of Warwickshire book implies that Brown-spot Pinions were declining in the county (in 2004), so perhaps that's why its taken me three years to catch one.

The second moth was a lot trickier. The micro Acleris schalleriana is very similar to a number of other Acleris moths and after photographing it I came up with several possible names before submitting one to an on-line expert. Eventually it got the thumbs up, although it sounds like many examples would need a specimen to be examined before they could be confirmed.

Acleris schalleriana

Like most micros the "common name" is not published in most moth guides. But in this case its on-line name, Viburnum Button, would have been a big hint to its identity as my trap sits on a table right next to an ornamental Viburnum we planted a dozen years ago. Anyway, once identified it was set free to no doubt wreak havoc in the garden.

The full list was;

Ruddy Streak 1,    Caloptilia semifascia 1,    Acleris schalleriana 1 (nfg),    Light Brown Apple Moth 1,    Garden Carpet 1,    Common Marbled Carpet 1,    Red-green Carpet 1,    Brimstone Moth 1,    Light Emerald 1,    Copper Underwing 2,    Barred Sallow 1 (nfy),    Brown-spot Pinion 1 (nfg),    Lunar Underwing 13,    Vine's Rustic 1,    Pale Mottled Willow 1,    Lesser Yellow Underwing 2,    Large Yellow Underwing 8,    Square-spot Rustic 2.