So far, August is shaping up to be a quiet month on the natural history front, well for me anyway, and moths and butterflies have been featuring more than birds, but I have been going out as much as I can. The weather hasn't been great for many ringing sessions, nor has it been brilliant for looking for insects, but Gail and I have been trying.
I have lumped together our moth catches from our garden light trap from the beginning of the month until this morning, and we have recorded 117 moths of 27 species, which is sadly, very quiet. Moth trap intruders have included a few Mottled Sedge caddis flies, European Crane Fly, and this morning a species of Harvestman, Opilio canestrinii. This species of Harvestman was first recorded in the UK in 1999 in Essex, and since then it has become more widespread and common. It has expanded northwards from Italy, Austria and Switzerland.
Our moth totals are as follows:
Common Rustic -35
Codling Moth - 4
Clay - 1
Dark Arches -2
Copper Underwing -4
Light Brown Apple Moth - 14
Poplar Hawkmoth - 1
Lesser Yellow Underwing -7
Flame Shoulder - 4
Large Yellow Underwing -17
Cabbage Moth - 1
Box-tree Moth - 1
Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing -3
Willow Beauty -3
Garden Carpet - 3
Agriphila straminella -2
Double-striped Pug - 1
Brown House Moth -3
Setaceous Hebrew Character - 1
Square-spot Rustic -3
Marbled Beauty - 1
Small Square-spot - 1
Yellow Shell - 1
Bright-line Brown-eye - 1
Grey Dagger - 1
Shuttle-shaped Dart - 1
Vine's Rustic - 1
Just under two weeks ago, we went out late morning looking for a few butterflies at various sites, and again it was quiet. The weather was okay temperature-wise, but it was a tad breezy, affecting one site more than the other.
We started off at Larkholme Grasslands, and we recorded 8 Meadow Browns, 4 Small Skippers, 4 Common Blues, and a Small White. We then had a look in the dunes at Rossall Point, but it was too breezy here, and we just had 10 Meadow Browns, a Common Blue, a Large White, and 2 Speckled Woods (scrubby area).
About a week ago, we had a ringing session at the Nature Park, and we had 6 oktas cloud cover, with a 10 mph south-easterly wind. As we were putting the nets up, the Starlings were exiting their reedbed roost, and we estimated about 4,000, which is an increase on recent weeks.
It felt quiet as we put the nets up, and it was quiet, as we only ringed ten birds as follows:
Reed Warbler - 4
Cetti's Warbler - 1
Whitethroat - 2
Willow Warbler - 2
Blackbird - 1
Sometimes it can feel quiet, and we have a good session, and other times we have a good feeling about the morning, and we have a poor session, you really can't tell what it's going to be like.
The birding was equally as quiet, and all that is perhaps worth mentioning are 2 Whimbrels, a Little Egret, a singing Cetti's Warbler, a Raven, and a Great Spotted Woodpecker.
We recorded a few insects, namely a Common Blue Damselfly, 2 Meadow Browns, 3 Speckled Woods, a Gatekeeper, and 2 Common Blue butterflies.
I have recorded Swifts over the house and garden in the evenings, but none since two on 12th August.
Inspired by, and on the recommendation of, a great guy called Dave Higginson-Tranter, who posts some brilliant videos on YouTube, mainly about fungi, I purchased Britain's Plant Galls - A Photographic Guide by Michael Chinery recently. The intention is for Gail and I to start looking for plant galls when we are out and about. We had a look in the garden, and found a few Eupontania pedunculi galls on the Willows in our garden, known as the Willow Gall Sawfly. It's a great book, and I can heartily recommend it, and it gets you looking for other things when you are out in the great outdoors, or even in your garden.
A couple of days later, Gail and I had a late morning walk from the Quay and along the Wyre estuary, again hoping for a few insects as it was sunny, but there was a niggling westerly wind.
We did have a few butterflies on the wing; 2 Small Whites, 2 Red Admirals, a Common Blue, 3 Peacocks, and a Painted Lady, which I think was our first of the year.
the harshness of the rusted razor wire, perhaps suggesting a landscape of decay,
and the beauty of the butterfly, showing that there is life and hope if we want it.
Out on the mud in the Quay were 97 Redshanks, our biggest count of the autumn so far. We also had a handful of Oystercatchers, but out over the river they were constantly heading downstream towards Great Knott, to feed in the mouth of the estuary. Also on Great Knott, between Fleetwood and Knott-End-on-Sea, there were at least 730 Sandwich Terns roosting, which is the most that I have seen there.
We also had 3 Little Egrets and a Whimbrel on the water's edge along the river. Walking back, we sat down overlooking the estuary on the old quayside, and we were looking at some Sea Plantain that had gone over, when we noticed some invertebrates running around on the vertical plain of the sandstone blocks, and then they would disappear into the joints of the blocks. After a few photographs, a bit of Googling, consulting some books back home, we concluded that they were a species of jumping bristletail, Petobrius brevistylis or maritimus. They are common, but it is amazing what you can see, if you take the time to look.
The following day I decided to have a sea-watch off Larkholme. I arrived at first light under 5 oktas cloud cover, with a 15 - 20 west-southwesterly wind. I set up at my seawatching/visible migration watch point, and enjoyed watching five Curlews bathing and preening in the water of the incoming tide.
The sea was quiet, although I enjoyed the highlight, which was a dark morph Arctic Skua that was leisurely heading north, harassing Sandwich terns as it went. I always marvel at the manoeuvrability of these large kleptoparisitic birds, as they out-fly smaller, more agile Terns. Stunning!
The supporting cast to the Skua were 47 Sandwich Terns, 25 Common Scoters, and 12 Shelducks. I didn't have any visible migration, and my walk around the farm fields didn't produce much other than 2 Kestrels, 11 Magpies, two Linnets, and a juvenile Reed Bunting.
The forecast isn't looking great over the next few days, with unsettled weather from the west in charge, but if there is a possibility to get out, we'll take it.
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