30th July

The little flood pools in the bottom fields are drying rapidly but still hold enough water to pull in the odd bird. Last night these included four young Yellow Wagtails…

And this morning there were two Green Sandpipers and at least eight Snipe (the first since early Spring)…

In the Magic Garden there were high numbers of phylloscopus warblers with every sun-facing tree seeming to have birds in. I also saw my first Southern Hawkers of the year and a day-flying bat repeatedly splashing on the surface of the lake. Was it drinking or catching prey? Unfortunately impossible to photograph.

The Little Grebe chicks seem to be down to one now although it’s possible this is a second pair as yesterday they were sitting on a different nest platform…

In light of catching  nine of the scarce micro moth Prochoreutis myllerana I went to have a look at its host plant, the lovely double-flowered Skullcap which grows in some profusion in the fen area of the Garden…

I almost immediately saw one of the moths on a nettle amongst the Skullcap…

In the end I found a least a dozen perched on grass stems or nettle leaves. I suspect the apparent rarity of this moth in Yorkshire is really a function of the relative scarcity of this plant and the lack of local moth-ers but an interesting find nonetheless and increases the Yorkshire records of the species by over a third!