Monday September 4 - The dreaded next day

 Strictly speaking, it was two days after the longest day when I was back at Morton Bagot. I am quite sure that every team competing in the WestMidsAlldayer has the same experience, seeing birds you missed on the big day.

It didn't take me long to hear a Greenfinch at Netherstead. The next hour was extremely pleasant in warm sunshine. All the expected warblers were present, including a singing Willow Warbler, a species which was on our list thanks to Gary, but which I personally had not recorded. Two Lesser Whitethroats and a family of Common Whitethroats were gorging themselves on blackberries prior to their big leap south.

Juvenile Common Whitethroat

Shortly afterwards I heard the first of two Yellow Wagtails heading south overhead. In the bright blue sky I was unable to locate it, but the call was distinctive enough. That would have been a good bird on Saturday.

I reached the nearest flash and established there were no new waders. However, some minutes later a flock of 23 Black-headed Gulls arrived. Where were they on Saturday?

Black-headed Gulls

A little while later I heard a Treecreeper call, and briefly saw it in flight. So we could have got 70 species with a bit more luck, but then so could everyone else.

Our total of 66 is exactly the same as we achieved in each of the last two years. I'm thinking of analysing the spring and autumn totals since I started doing the WestMidsalldayer, but I'll save that for a future post.

You may have noticed that moths haven't featured recently. I must confess that my interest in moth trapping has been waning slightly. It's partly the time of year, but mostly that I'm not adding too many new moths. The seemingly bottomless pit of new species is not as bottomless as I thought.

Nevertheless I did put it out last night, and caught 148 moths of 30 species. New for the year were Square-spot Rustic, Flounced Rustic, Lesser Yellow Underwing, Mompha subbistrigella, Copper Underwing, Centre-barred Sallow, Barred Sallow, and Green Carpet. None of these is remotely scarce, and even in terms of our garden the most noteworthy,  Green Carpet, is only worth highlighting because I didn't catch one last year.

I have seen one new moth since my previous trapping session. A Skin Moth was added to the list on August 22. It was spotted by Lyn as it crawled across the utility room floor and was almost passed off as a flying ant. 

Skin Moth - Aug 22 

This appears to be another common moth, but I hadn't seen one before.

In theory birding should be good in September, but locally not so much. Hopefully this year will buck the trend.