Thursday 29 September 2011

September 29th

There were a few different moths around the traps this morning, Yellow Line Quaker and Merveille Du Jour, were new for the year and Four Spotted Footman was new for the site! New site records have been hard to come by for a while so this was a very welcome addition. It is categorised as Nationally Scarce A and is an immigrant to south-east England, with a possible small populations in the south-west.

Four Spotted Footman (the male has no spots!) Thanks to Steve Broyd for the photo.
Merveille Du Jour

 Chestnuts (the moth not the actual nut!!?) were more abundant today after the first one or two being found earlier in the week, Pine and Grey Pine Carpet were both found as was another Large Wainscot. Lunar Underwing or Lunies as we affectionately call them were down to only 130ish!
I'm struggling to find anything different to tell you about on the bird front, the highlight was nearly 3 thrushes flying over which I thought might be the first Redwings of autumn, just because they were high and were smallish thrushes, they were SONG THRUSH, not to be sniffed at though, as only a short time ago I was wondering where they all were!
There was still a bit of mist around this morning

Otherwise it was ditto yesterday, minus the Tree Pipit. Stephen had 3 Greylags over, from his favourite watchpoint while we had one each of CORMORANT. He also had a Lesser Whitethroat a couple of days ago. For completeness here are the other bits and pieces from this morning, SISKIN (2 or 3 small flocks), YELLOWHAMMER 20+, MEADOW PIPIT 15, CHIFFCHAFF 6, BLACKCAP 1, GOLDCREST 3, BULLFINCH 3, also there were signs that a few of the commoner finches were moving with small flocks of CHAFFINCHES and GOLDFINCHES, flying mainly west. My next visit will be Monday morning hopefully the first thrushes and a few more finches will be heading my way :-)

Chiffchaff


Yellowhammer

6 comments:

Marianne said...

All rather quiet on the birding front round here too. But those two moths are just fantastic :)

Greenie said...

Alan ,
Great Yellowhammer shots .
Like the moths too .

Phil said...

Great looking moths Alan. I've noticed a small increase in Song Thrush numbers at New Hythe lately. I didn't see a single one for quite some time during the summer.

Alan Pavey said...

Hi Marianne, I'm still enjoying recording the moths and some are quite amazing looking things :-)

Hi Greenie, Thanks, it was nice as the sun broke through just before I left for work, when the Yellowhammer posed briefly.

Hi Phil, There are some really nice moths out there. I have noticed the Song Thrush thing before but maybe was more aware this year due writing the blog :-)

JRandSue said...

Stunning images of one of my favourites.
John.

Alan Pavey said...

Hi John, Thanks, they're one of mine too, and seem to be increasing here :-)