Wednesday April 30

 This morning's pre-breakfast dash was to Morton Bagot. It's the last day of April and maybe the best part of spring is over. I spent yesterday exploring, but was keen to give the patch one last try. It paid off.

Three Grasshopper Warblers were singing in the Netherstead area, I even briefly saw one of them, but my focus was on another species. Cuckoos have been seen here, and at Morgrove Coppice, and at Studley, but not by me. This morning I was delighted to put that right. As I approached the flash field I could hear one calling in the distance. I didn't expect to see it, let alone film it or photograph it, but I put that right too.

Obviously the shot won't be winning any awards, but I was just pleased to see it. This is the Cuckoo

Other than that the flash field was pretty disappointing, just a few Lapwings and Mallard were present. The Whimbrel seems to have gone. No surprise there.

I don't normally bother with Pheasants, there is a strong argument that regular releases into the countryside for shooting has upset the equilibrium of nature, but when I blundered into one which was standing on a gate at Netherstead, well it was irresistible.

As for yesterday, I visited some farmland at Oldberrow Hill first thing. This is actually closer to home than Morton Bagot and a bit of a gem.

Birds seen or heard included Lesser Whitethroat, several Whitethroats, Skylarks and best of all at least one pair of Yellowhammers.

After breakfast I headed down to the southern edge of my circular patch to visit farmland around Aston Cantlow. 

This produced more Yellowhammers and Skylarks in an area which as far as I can tell hasn't been losing them. The river meadows look good for warblers, and I saw Blackcaps, Whitethroat, and Lesser Whitethroat there.

While the fast flowing river added a pair of Grey Wagtails to the day.

Finally, the village itself was quite productive with breeding Starlings, House Sparrows, Collared Doves, and House Martins. It's easy to forget that villages have different birds than the surrounding farmland.

Moths: I decided to bring forward the Garden Moth night to Wednesday evening because I plan to be up early on Saturday morning for the annual Spring all-dayer (I'm joining the Earlswood team again) and reckoned I would need a break from two early starts on the trot.

As it happened this coincided with the warmest weather of the year, so I was expecting lots of moths. And I'm pleased to say that's just what I got. My final haul was 46 moths of 28 species which included 14 new for the year, and two new for the garden.

It's such a thrill when your eyes alight on an unfamiliar moth and my first one was certainly that. Grey Birch is apparently widespread and fairly common, but as the name suggests, it's caterpillars require birch to feed on. I know of no birch trees in the immediate vicinity so that's probably why I had not caught one before.

The other new one was a micro, so there wasn't quite the excitement. In fact I didn't realise it was something different until I started my on-line research. The penny quickly dropped that this was Dark-barred Tortrix Syndemis musculana, a common enough moth which I probably should have caught in the eight years I've been mothing.

Grey Birch

Dark-barred Tortrix Syndemis musculana