21st April

My mothing friend John has happily recovered from his back injury so we had the first village mothing session for over 18 months last night. As usual we set the traps in the Magic Garden. April is still early so we weren’t expecting a bumper catch, and so it proved with only 40 moths of eight species caught. However, this did include two new species for the parish, Red Chestnut and this rather handsome Early Tooth-striped…

Commonest species was Hebrew Character…

But also had five of these Powdered Quakers …

Generally it’s been a good weekend for insects with the unseasonably warm weather. Butterflies were prominent with at least six Speckled Woods in the Magic Garden yesterday…

Plus ten Orange-tip, two Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Brimstone and my first Comma of the year.

I also photographed this rather striking Dark-edged Bee Fly (see the long proboscis)…

And a reminder how little I know about beetles!

Birdwise the highlight was my first Whitethroat of the year singing near our house this morning, three Lesser Whitethroat along Greenhills Lane and another flock of summer-plumaged Golden Plover with 250 near the river on Friday evening. 

Incidentally I was speculating in my blog of 30th March about whether the flock which behaved differently was composed of two different populations of Goldies. I recently had an email from a researcher who has written a paper on moult in Golden Plover and she confirmed that both ‘local’ and Icelandic birds would be moving through our area at this time of year so that may explain the difference between the two groups.  Otherwise it’s been pretty quiet although migrants are drifting in and nesting is in full swing…

The Treecreeper was collecting sheep wool from the barbed wire fences.