And still they come

The last few days have really made up for the dismal April, although I suspect that some of the early spring moths have slipped through the net. Still, we look forward as all good folk should and this post shows why - a Sunday and Monday trap and both days providing lots of activity and new moths for the year. And some great moths to see too!

Sunday 27th - 33 moths of 16 species. 15W BLB and 117W CFL combo trap
The majority of space in the trap was taken up by the boisterous Scalloped Hazel and tonight brought 9 of them to the trap, by far the most I've seen! New for the year came in the form of 2 x Pale Tussock, a cracking little Mottled Pug, a tiny Firethorn Leaf Miner, Iron Prominent and a Rustic Shoulder-knot. The Iron Prom was a bit battered and had obviously been around for a while so I'm surprised that I haven't seen one earlier. The rest were really fresh moths, especially the Scalloped Hazel, indicating the recent warm weather had eventually brought about the miraculous transformation that brings them to the trap.

Pale Tussock

Look at those antenae

Mottled Pug

Firethorn Leaf Minor

A great night and some old friends from last year providing lots of entertainment. I've also come across (what I think is) an interesting idea for photographing moths. As anyone who has ever tried, it is bloody difficult to get 'em to stop still! Putting them in the fridge seems to work to some degree, particularly works well with Noctuids and the like, not quite so good with Geometrids and almost no good with the micros. After spending hours trying to photographing them last year and watching the after effects of fridging them up for the day I noticed that almost all the species immediately stuck our their tongue (is that the right choice of word?) and started searching for moisture, presumably to re-hydrate themselves after being so cold. It immediately struck me that if there were something sweet and tempting for them to drink then they may stay longer. And thus began my experiment with sugar, honey and water dripped onto the wall where I take my photos to see which species respond more than others. As you can see for micros it works a treat, the Leaf Miner above stayed for plenty of time. Pugs seem to love it too, which is great as I haven't many good pug shots. The only ones that haven't appeared to appreciate my culinary skills are the Brimstone and Twenty-plume Moth. The tests continue...

Monday 28th - 43 moths of 21 species . 15W Actinic with 42W CFL combo
With equally good conditions, I thought it would be a good test to see how the moths respond differently to the Actinic. As you can see the results speak for themselves - almost 30% more moths than yesterday. Tonight 7 new for the year including this Poplar Hawk-moth (always great to get a hawk in the trap!!), Small Phoenix, the first of plenty of Heart & Darts, the first orange-panelled Common Marbled Carpet appeared (the others I've caught so far have been the dark grey variety) and a few others. Nothing new for my lifelist again, but as you can see some fascinatingly varied moths!

Poplar Hawk-moth

Small Phoenix

White-spotted Pug

Incurvaria masculella

Foxglove Pug

Buff Ermine

Twenty-plume Moth

With all these newbies the moth yearlist has now hit the 81 mark. The trap is out again as we speak and buzzing with this heavy cloud, hopefully it doesn't rain too hard...

End of week catch up - Part 2

Continued from last nights post
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Saturday 26th May - Carr Wood
I could hardly contain my excitement when I organised to go down to Carr Wood, considering that the weather looked like it was going to be good (a little cooler than the rest of the week but still warm) and also because the garden had started giving lots of year ticks. The previous two times we've trapped there have been fairly uneventful, giving us new ticks for the Wood but nothing unexpected.
We were joined by two members of the Amber Valley Council who brought down with them some bat detectors. So we set up the traps by 2115 and went down to the pond to join them watching the Pipistrelles catching midges between the trees. We counted up to five but there could have been more they're so blooming fast!
We lit the traps up at 2145 and straight away picked up plenty of flies and some sort of rove beetle(?). The moths weren't far behind with Common Swift the first to fall into the MV. The activity was pretty constant, every few minutes or so, so we were kept pretty busy. At 2300 as me and Ross from the council stood watching the trap, a Lime Hawk-moth dropped like a plane, bounced once off the lamp and fell straight into the trap! You can imagine how excited me and Jordan were! And this wasn't the only good moth of the night. Ross potted up a Grass Rivulet, which is new for me, and three tortrix turned out to be Capua vulgana, another newbie! The excitement kept us going till just after midnight and when we had packed up the traps and were sat writing up our findings by torchlight I noticed an orangey-coloured moth flitting about. I potted it up...and it was a Clay Triple-lines - another new for me!! Brilliant. Can't wait till National Moth Night to run another trap. If you fancy coming along then please send me an email!

Grass Rivulet

Unknown Stigmella species?

Clay Triple-lines

Final tally:

80W MBF Robinson-style trap		15W Actinic - 117W CFL Combo Skinner-style trap
Caloptilia syringella	3
Capua vulgana	2	Capua vulgana	1
Clay Triple-lines	1
Clouded Silver	1
Common Pug	5	Common Pug	6
Common Swift	2
Cork Moth	1	Cork Moth	2
Flame Carpet	1
Garden Carpet	2	Garden Carpet	1
Grass Rivulet	1
Green Carpet	2
Lime Hawk-moth	1
		Nematopogon swammerdamella	1
Scalloped Hazel	2	Scalloped Hazel	1
Shuttle-shaped Dart	1
		Silver-ground Carpet	1
Stigmella sp.	1
		Tinea trinotella	3
		Twenty-plumed Moth	1
White-shouldered House Moth	1	White-shouldered House Moth	1

Moth Yearlist is finally coming along nicely with 69.

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Sunday 27th May

A wander down to the River Amber with Jordan and a fishing mate this afternoon meant basically a few hours in the field both staring at a rod waiting for it to snap into action, and staring around the field/river looking for all things naturelle. A Kingfisher flew past us twice, and a Great Spotted Woodpecker called from a dead tree not too far off. Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs were singing, Demoiselles played in the nettles by the rivers edge, with the males doing circular flights around the female as she sat on the vegetation. Also found plenty of these Ramsons (I think?).

It was another gorgeous day and thoughts were already turning of moth-trapping again!

However before that, another friend texted me from their barbecue with a photo and the title "ID Please!" I opened it and found an Eyed Hawk-moth staring back at me. I quickly texted her back and she told me that the boys had found it in the Apple Tree and it was resting in a Wisteria. Five minutes later and Jordan had it in his hands! Awesome!

The trap went out again on Sunday night, with some more good results but I've run out of time (again) tonight, so I'll add that info to tomorrow's post.

End of week catch up - Part 1

Phew! What a manic few days. A trap every night (Thurs-Fri-Sat-Sun) and some bits of nature thrown into the weekend have meant that I have a lot to say, but don't want to bore you too much. So I'll give a summary of what I've caught/seen and hope you enjoy it!
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Thursday 24th May

Thursdays trap was good (21 moths of 14 species) with a few more macros turning up, but still dominated by micros. One of the macros was one of my favourite moths - The Chinese Character. I love these guys as they fly in totally unassuming, white with a couple of dark patches but then once the land - boom - they transform into a bird-dropping!! It's amazing! True evolutionary camouflage at its best surely? I tried to get a photo of it with wings outstretched but it wouldn't co-operate, so I took this pot shot instead.

A few other macros from the list included this Common Swift (left) and Small Rivulet (right). Both of these are regular on the garden but it's great to see them after all this horrid weather!

The only new species (I'm hoping!) is this bromzy coloured micro which I have my fingers crossed is Emmetia marginea. If anyone can offer any advise I'd be much appreciated, I'm waiting on a reply from the smart-mothers at Back Garden Moths. (EDIT: I was correct with my id, so that's another new moth for the garden list!)

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Friday 25th May

The weekly Scouts drop-off left me with a couple of hours to kill, and the choice between Garganey at Attenborough Nature Reserve or two Black Terns at Branston Gravel Pits. Both birds are desirable but I decided to go for the Black Tern simply due to the location. Now I've tried to find other birds at BGP but the closest I've ever got it Branston Water Park. And this is clearly not the same place (or even anywhere near?) I wandered round the Water Park and down the canal to Tatenhill Lock and then walked west between two pools and came to a load of fields. No more water! And defintely not even a sniff of Black Terns. I did however see a few moths, and the Carpets were out in force. Green Carpet, Common and Silver-ground Carpet (both new for the year) were along the hawthorn hedges along with this suspected Water Carpet (it will be my first, so if anyone can confirm then I'd be eternally in debt - in a moth-sense. EDIT: Again the nice folk at BGM have confirmed my id. We're doing well this year!!).

Friday night saw more good conditions for the moths (although if I dare to say this it could do with being a bit cloudy, sharp intake of breath from the audience!) so I put the trap out again. A bit of an experiment ensued when I used the 80W MBF bulb with the Skinner trap but the results weren't quite as I'd expected them (14 moths of 11 species) but then the cooler night time temperatures probably lead to the smaller catch. The highlights were this Muslin Moth (left) and another Mompha subbistrigella (right) a tiny little micro that I've caught three out of last three traps.

Part Two to follow - with news of a much more successful trapping session at Carr Wood and a surprise find in a friends backgarden!

Things hot up

Amazing how responsive nature is, isn't it? The tiny winged creatures feel the sun on their backs/cases and out they come! I find it all fascinating and mind-boggling how the destiny of the species relies on such basic criteria as weather. It also makes me think about how much climate change is really affecting things, when you realise that man's influence on the natural order of things has only taken a really serious effect for the last couple of hundred years, as opposed to the whole of man's existance over the last 60,000+ years! I can't help but think that the recent weather phenomena that we've experienced has hit populations hard before (probably for millenia) and yet just because we're experiencing it alongside nature, we feel we need to change things.
Droughts, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes - they're all natural disaster events that have happened previously, yes they have a catastrophic aftermath, but it is, after all, nature. I learned of a scheme just today where the effects of a limestone river drying up during the dry season, through the very natural phenomenon of the water finding it's way through the cracks and fissures underground instead of running on the surface like a 'proper river', were being "remedied" by concreting the river bed. Tourism was the reason - it won't look good if the river isn't there! Can you imagine the effects of ensuring the river is flowing all year?

Anyway, I digress due to the lack of sleep from last night because I was SOOO excited by finally seeing moths aplenty! The final tally was 41, which when compared to Sunday's 7 was such a vast improvement I was positively skipping round the garden. It was however interesting to note that 27 of those 41 were micros. Maybe the smaller species tend to respond quicker to the warmer temperatures?

Bee Moth

Waved Umber

Clouded Silver

Common Pug

Light Brown Apple Moth

Esperia sulphurella

Ancylis badiana

Caloptilia syringella

Tinea trinotella

All this frenzied activity puts my moth yearlist up to a much more respectable 56!

Also had this gorgeous new-for-the-year Holly Blue on the Ripley Greenway, near the stream at 6:30pm, enjoying some clayey treats in the sunshine!

May ups its game

...but only slightly.



Garden Carpet



Campion



After some great birding over the weekend, the weather appears to have made a turn for the better. Sunday night and the trap was out! With temperatures of 13 degrees for the daytime, and only dropping to 9 degrees throughout the night I thought that something wonderful would grace the trap.



Pale Mottled Willow



Shuttle-shaped Dart



Garden Carpet, Pale Mottled Willow, Campion and Twenty-plume Moth were all potted before departing for bed - and all new for the garden yearlist. I was excited to see what would be in the trap when I awoke!!

Sadly, the exitement was a little far-fetched and the only inhabitants of the trap were 2 x Shuttle-shaped Dart. But they too were new for the garden yearlist, and take pride of place among the 7 moths that came to please me. The other little fellow was Emmelina monodactyla.

This week is looking much warmer, albeit with clearer night skies, so hopefully the traps will definitely be out again soon (and much fuller too!)

A Blue Sunday

Funny how sometimes birds can really get by the throat and give you a shake to get you out of the dullness of a Sunday! Lunchtime came and went with us not having even stepped outside, apart from to say morning to the rabbit. Then, after checking my phone for the umpteenth time, the news of a Bluethroat at Doxey Marshes got me off the sofa and preparing to run.

And I'm glad we did! Doxey is an hour from home, and by the time we got there, there was already a crowd of around 50ish other birders hanging around a very unlikely looking corner of vegetation. After half an hour of nothing but raised bins and a bit of pointing, some of the birders definitely started to all be looking in the same direction. Then murmurs of directions to Juncus and sedges and "...on the muddy bit between the reeds...". This didn't mean anything to me and Jordan as we were too low down and looking across the vegetation. We needed to get higher up the bank, so we moved round to a very helpful lady and companions who had been there a while and noticed its foraging pattern. Indeed, in no time we were both looking at the blue throat of the Bluethroat. Now the views weren't stonking (as Jordan kept telling me on the return to the car!) but that was his first and my second, and actually my first actual blue-throated Bluethroat (my first one was at Spurn in September 1996, and was equally brief and elusive and not blue at all). So my thanks go to the massed birders that helped us out, and to the very lucky observer who spotted this Midlands Beauty in the first place.

Hopefully this video shows how difficult the views were!

Other birds of interest were Common and Lesser Whitethroat, Reed and Sedge Warbler, and these Canadas with babies, awww!

And this not-quite-so-adorable-but-I-think-this-is-also-a-first-for-me Alderfly!

So Bluethroat makes my 143rd bird for 2012;

The moth trap is on and doing well so far with Campion and Pale Mottled Willow potted for the yearlist, hopefully many more to report back tomorrow...........

One flew over the gravel pits

Last night whilst Jordan was at Scouts I had a run down to Willington Gravel Pits to see what was about. The last time I was there a few weeks ago it was during the massive amount of rain that we were experiencing and the entrance track looked like this...

Fortunately it had dried up a little and was passable. In fact I think all that water had levelled things out along the road - it didn't seem half as full of pot holes as I remember! The rain started to spit a little so I donned waterproofs and a cover for the scope and made the best of it. I'm glad I did too, as the first bird I spotted was this...



It stayed in the first field where the sign board is, and flitted around between perches, cuckooing occasionally. Its mate was seen briefly further back towards the reeds presumably looking for warblers or maybe pipits nests in which to lay its progeny.

Along the lane were the usual warblers with Lesser Whitethroat showing briefly and a male Blackcap eventually giving himself away. The hawthorns were absolutely buzzing with bugs, a huge hatch of midges and flies providing food for hundreds of hungry Swift, Swallows and Sand Martins (but no House Martin spotted) that were feeding in droves over the lakes! A brilliant sight. Sedge and Reed Warbler were singing/chirruping and the Cetti's even gave me one blast of song, just to let me know he was still there. The lakes looked a bit bare of waterfowl with only a few Great Crested Grebes, Tufted Duck, Mute Swan and Mallard being seen. But these Ruff reminded me that Willington really was a place that things can turn up out of the blue!

 

This thought also got my mind racing when a small wader flew across the main lake and landed on the spit. In the gathering gloom it could have been anything from a Little Ringed Plover to a Temminck's Stint, but I'm struggling to pin it down with the very brief views I had of it. Some just have to go down as mystery birds, don't they! The return to the car was done a bit quicker as the rain got a bit heavier, but these small mushrooms growing on the side of a chopped down tree caught my eye. If any of my readers have any ideas what they are, I'd be most appreciated!

Bird Year list = 141

Moth Yearlist = not much improvement on 42. Although the weather looks like it could be good this weekend so hopefully there'll be more Lep news shortly!

I've found Sanctuary

I've already seen the Dartford Warbler a few years ago at the Pride Park Sanctuary but that wasn't from the "official" place, we were looking over the hedge from the stadium side. After school today we visited the Sancuary proper, and it was really good!! Despite being in the middle of a big urbanised area with gas works, car showrooms and of course the home of the Mighty Rams this little spot really does feel like a Sanctuary, a space away from all the hustle and bustle where nature (and it's watchers) can be alone together. I'm starting to appreciate the ethos of David Lindo after today's visit.

Tonight's cast were this splendid female Wheatear, the nesting Sand Martins, a pair of Little Ringed Plover at close range as well as some Coot, Mallard, a Sedge Warbler which didn't show itself, a very melodious Linnet and a pair of Lapwing. A brilliant site that I encourage everyone to visit, especially as it seems to be on the verge of being swamped. To come so far with the place to only lose it again would be a shame. The list of wildlife is quite amazing, this Spring a Ring Ouzel stayed for a while. Wish I'd gone to see that now...








Bird Yearlist = 141
Moth Yearlist = is almost forgotton about due to the terrible weather!

A weekend of ups and downs

The temperatures looked ok-ish, the wind had dropped, it was dry. So why did we only catch three moths???

This was the result of our second trapping session in my local nature reserve - Carr Wood. I'm worried that if this carries on we may lose the interest of my semi-nature loving brother (who helps with all the carrying of equipment!). I'm gonna make sure that the next trip out there is in perfect conditions, just to prove to everyone that moths do actually live in Carr Wood (I'm not even sure of this myself now...)

Anyway, despite the poor form the three moths that we did catch were all new for the Carr Wood list. Hurrah!

1 x Green Carpet

1 x Eriocrania subpurpurella

1 x  another micro to be identified

EDIT: The omniscient Douglas from Montgomery Moths group has come up with the answer here, Zelleria hepariella. A new moth for me and for the Carr Wood list, so I am happy about this! Thanks Douglas!

After this disappointing night, the garden obviously felt that it needed to make up for it, and produced this Garden First - Adela reaumurella - on Sunday morning.

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Sunday was a lovely day, weatherwise, so we took the opportunity of an afternoon walk around a new site - Clough Wood near Winster. Well, we tried our best. But the navigator wasn't as good as my usual crew and so we ended up on the western side of the wood, in a deeply gouged farm track that my car found unpassable. So we walked for an hour along this road and eventually found Clough Wood, so at least we know where it is , but we still have to explore it properly.

We did have a good time though. A male Redstart put on a quick show in a hawthorn hedge, and a few other common woodland birds were going about their business. I did find some interesting plants (I'm finding plants/flowers more and more interesting, perhaps cos it's the only things I can photograph!?!).

I believe these are Yellow Dead-nettles (EDIT: Ragged Robin has pointed out that these are Yellow Archangel. Thanks RR!)

The bluebells are also fully in flower now and looked gorgeous as they carpeted the slopes running down to the stream.

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An evening to myself needed filling (I'm still feeling out-of-sorts from a cold I've had all week, so I've been a real grump today!) so I thought a trip to Netherfield Lagoons would sort me out. Netherfield hasn't been in the birdnews for a while but I thought that there would be something to see - it's always a good spot! The photo left shows the gravel pit viewed from the Deepwater Pit, the sun was casting a huge shadow over the lower pits.

The wind was blowing a hoolie again today, so lots of the smaller birds were hunkered down, however I did hear Blackcap, Reed, Sedge, Willow and a Cetti's Warbler and the Whitethroats were on show. A Kingfisher zipped by at one point, and the number of Swifts and hirundines was staggering, there was a good hatch as I walked back to the car so obviously they had anticipated this and collected here tonight ready for the feast! Once again my photography attempts turned to insects and flowers. These tiny purply-blue flowers caught my attention. I know I've seen them a hundred times, but the strain of not knowing their name is stretching my OCD to it's limit! If anyone can help out then I'd appreciate it. (EDIT: Again Ms Robin has pointed me in the direction of Ground Ivy. A lovely name for a very delicate little flower.)

The White-tailed bumblebee below wasn't put off by my presence in the slightest as it merrily fed on the White Dead-nettle.

 My other great find tonight was my first Red and Black Froghopper. I was suprised at how big it was, I'm used to getting the smaller greeny ones in the moth-trap, but this was a brute. I gave him a quick test of his strength by slowing nudging him off his perch, and my goodness he could jump!! Impressive beast!