Saturday April 5 - mostly Morton Bagot

 It's been a scratchy end to the week, culminating in today's visit to Morton Bagot. The wind direction has been stuck in the north-east, so although its been sunny its not been warm.

The ringers were out in force, but their activities had been hampered by the strength of the wind. I carried on past them but had very few stand-out moments. The best was discovering that the Avocet flock has increased further. A new site record of a dozen are now present, with eight on the nearest flash and four on the furthest. Unlike last week the larger group suddenly got together for an Avocet face-off, and I got a shot of the flock.

Also present on the nearest flash were two Green Sandpipers, at least seven Lapwings, and 24 Teal, although the highlight for me was a brief fly-through of my first Sand Martin here this year.

Very disappointingly I could find no Wheatears or Redstarts etc to boost my year list, although a female Stonechat did put in an appearance for the Chat clan.

Earlier in the morning I'd paid my second visit in two days to Earlswood Lakes. The attraction was the falling water line which has now revealed the shingle island and a muddy perimeter to Engine Pool. Unfortunately luck has not been with me. Yesterday, after I'd left, the Earlswood birders found two Little Gulls (there had been five two days previously), a Green Sandpiper, and a Little Ringed Plover. This morning I at least saw the Little Ringed Plover, and a good flock of hirundines, mainly Sand Martins (37) but including four House Martins proving that it was witheringly cold.

A second Little Ringed Plover showed up after I'd left, of course.

During yesterday afternoon Lyn and I went to Compton Verney where the art installations we saw could best be described as strange. I managed to secrete my camera in my bag and that paid off when I crept up on a Brimstone butterfly feeding in the sunshine.

That was one more butterfly than I managed at Morton Bagot today.

And finally, I put my moth trap out last night and caught 22 moths of 10 species, which wasn't bad considering the temperature dropped to 3 degrees C. The stand out was an exceptionally early Poplar Kitten. They are not supposed to emerge until the end of May.

Poplar Kitten

I've now had feedback from David Brown (Warwickshire Recorder for macro moths) confirming that this is easily the earliest ever recorded in Warwickshire, beating the previous record of one on 23 April 2011.