Tuesday June 24

This isn't usual, posting something mid-week. Well the fact is I've had an excellent day, and not just because England won the test match.

It began with little expectation. I hauled myself off to Cladswell, a Worcestershire village in the south-west of my Circle. The habitat didn't look anything special, just fields and hedgerows. It was also a cloudy start and a bit blustery. I picked a likely looking circuit and half way round was faced with two alternative routes back to the car.

The first would be to turn north and walk through more sheep fields.

 I didn't fancy it.

The option I took was the southern route, through crop fields. Maybe I'd hear a Quail. Well I flushed a couple of Red-legged Partridges but no Quail.

I made the right choice, although ironically the good stuff turned up when I was once again walking around fields of sheep. Perhaps unsurprisingly there was a Red Kite patrolling the area looking for carcasses.

The real stroke of luck occurred when I reached the last field before turning north back to the village. A passerine flicked up into a straggly hedge, and I quickly realised it was a juvenile Redstart, my first of the year.

Seeing it was one thing, photographing it quite another. I slowly pursued it along the footpath getting brief glimpses every now and then. Eventually I resorted to shots of the hedge where I thought it probably was, and hoping for the best. Redstarts are usually like this. Anyway, my best effort is depicted below.

What I do like is finding something unexpected in a place no sane birder would visit. I'm obviously somewhat nuts. I also added a singing Lesser Whitethroat before I got much further.

Back home during the afternoon I decided to give the pheromone lure another go. Having failed on Lunar Hornet Moth and Red-belted Clearwing over the weekend I deployed a lure for Orange-tailed Clearwing. About an hour later, convinced I was doing something wrong I checked the trap again and found it was occupied.

Surprisingly the lure had attracted a Yellow-legged Clearwing and not the one targeted. I should now be showing you a superb shot of a thoroughly relaxed moth, but incompetence intervened. After removing it from the fridge, the moth looked dozy enough in the trap. Fortunately I took a photo of it inside the trap before moving outside and discovering I couldn't open the pot. After a bit of a struggle I managed it, but by then the moth was warming up and within seconds it was off in a blur. No wonder you never see them in a natural setting.

I should also say they are harder to identify than I thought. I went through several species before realising that the fact it had yellow legs was probably significant.

I'll try again a few more times before I hand the trap back to its owner.