Is this an improvement...or a brief reprieve?

Wahay! Monday is dry and - are my eyes deceiving me? - sunny! Yep the weather forecast looked good for Monday morning so I got up at dawn and headed down to Attenborough to mop up as much as I could of the recent summer migrant arrivals. I was hoping for Black and Arctic Tern and Little Gull, but none of these were on show. However, I did manage an impressive list of 48 species in 2 hours! 

The difference a bit of sunshine makes is phenomenal. There were birds everywhere and each one had a song in its heart! The Linnets at the Tower Hide were looking brilliant, this female (left) sat up long enough for a snap. Blackcaps stood out warbling proudly, Chiffchaff chiffed and chaffed happily in the morning sun and this Whitethroat was one of many scratching out it's little song from the tops of the low shrubs.

You tell by my writing that even I'm a bit infected by this spring feeling. The new additions to the yearlist came in the form of Sedge and Reed Warbler, Common Tern, the aforementioned Whitethroat (and I'm pretty sure I heard a Lesser Whitethroat too), Swift and to top it off, a quick chat with a photographer on the bridge by the Nature Centre made us pause long enough to spot two Hobbies flying over. A truly fantastic spring morning, and made all the more pleasing by the shiny yellow thing in the sky!


A couple of flowers caught my eye on my wanderings and I wonder if anyone reading this can identify them for me (flowers are still a bit of a black art for me!). No doubt they are common species but one's that I haven't noticed before.

The day just got better with temperatures reaching 19degrees on my way home. "The trap is definitely going out tonight" I thought to myself. "It'll be brilliant!". The temperature stayed around 12 degrees until I got home from the City/Man U game and I inspected the trap.

The only new visitor was this V-Pug, found on the shed wall. In fact he was the ONLY visitor. As the rain started again about 2300hrs I packed the trap away to discover that I hadn't caught anything!

Is the trap not up to spec, or am I still a bit too hopeful? We'll see soon enough I'm sure...


Bird Year List = 136
Moth Year List = 27

Carsington Spring search

After the rain and cold conditions of Monday, my day off today with Jordan gave us time to enjoy the sunshine a bit. So I decided on a trip to Carsington to mop up a few of the summer migrants that have braved the weather. It still rained a bit, but the majority of the time it was dry and we had a great walk between Sheepwash and Lane End.

The wintering Great Northern Diver was seen from Sheepwash distantly, but by the time we had walked down to Lane End it had swum up the reservoir to be opposite the hide and we could make out that it was now moulting into summer plumage. This video shows some of the detail although it was still quite a way across the water from the hide. We also picked out the two Common Scoters that have been present for a couple of days, although they were very distant.



The walk down to Sheepwash Hide gave us ample views of the Primroses (above right) and running in and out of these and the fallen logs were a party of what I thought were mice. After watching them for a good half hour they had put on quite a show and I'd had sufficient views of them to think they were one of the voles. I didn't get good enough views to distinguish between Common and Short-tailed. As these were the first time I'd seen voles I really didn't stand a chance of getting the species. They didn't seem intimidated by us though as we stood there watching them. Jordan tried to capture them on film but they were a little too fast for the camera! Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs were singing, as were the Chaffinches and Thrushes. Not many ducks left now, but a pair of Teal, two Shelduck, several Mallards and Tufted Duck, Redshank, Oystercatcher and Lapwing were all seen from the hide. And best of all were the first Swallows of the year. Only two but that's good enough for me!

This picture (left) shows some sort of growth from a large species of tree at the start of the footpath from the car park at Sheepwash down towards Lane End. I've never seen this before and can't find it in my multitude of books on British trees. If anyone knows what this is I'd be interested. I'm going to return in a week or so and see what it's turned into! Not sure if its the leaf buds or seeds?
I also found several of these leafmines (above) on the brambles, again if any of my more learned watchers can identify it I'd be very grateful! Leafmines are a bit beyond me at this point in my Moth-career.

Swallow and Blackcap takes my Bird Yearlist to 126.