Since my last post we have operated our garden light trap for moths just three times, mainly because of the weather, and having lots of 'birdie' things on. We have recorded 79 moths of 31 species; a Campion, a Dark Sword-grass, two Buff Ermines, a Bright-line Brown-eye, five Lesser Yellow Underwings, a Small Dusty Wave, three Single-dotted Waves, 20 Large Yellow Underwings, two Twenty-plume Moths, seven Riband Waves, two Codling Moths, two Clays, a Dot Moth, two Australian orange-tips, three Marbled Beauties, a Garden Carpet, a Mother of Pearl, four Light brown Apple Moths, a Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, two Scalloped Oaks, a Crescent, seven Diamond-back Moths, a White-shouldered House Moth, two Common Wainscots, a Cabbage Moth, a Vine's Rustic, a Bulrush Veneer, a True Lover's Knot, a Flame Shoulder, and a Agriphila straminella.
Ten days ago-ish, Gail and I had a walk along the estuary from the quay late morning, and it was was warm, with three oktas cloud cover, and a 15 - 20 mph west-northwesterly wind. Even though the wind could be considered brisk, a few insects were on the wing. Most numerous were Small White butterflies with a count of 19, and then six Common Blue butterflies, four Large Whites, three Red Admirals, a Small Skipper, and two Small Coppers.
I keep reporting here on the Shelduck family, and they still have all nine ducklings, so that's great. Black-headed Gulls have now increased to 22, and 14 Lesser Black-backed Gulls, and 350 Herring Gulls were roosting close to the dock channel. The Herring Gull chick on the old ferry pier is progressing well.
The following day I was at my client's farm in Bowland carrying out the last Curlew productivity check. Two pairs of Curlew were left, both with two large chicks that were probably capable of flight. It has been quite a successful breeding season for them with at least 10 - 12 pairs, rearing 1 - 2 chicks to the fledging stage, which is more than is required to increase the population. A highlight of the morning, besides the good news regarding the Curlews, was a ring-tail Hen Harrier that floated east to west, hunting over the meadows.
On 10th July, we had a ringing session at the Nature Park, and it was our first for three weeks. The net rides required a little bit of a hair cut before we could get the nets up, but it didn't take us long. It was flat calm, with some cloud cover, so perfect for ringing.
When we were checking the nets on one of the net rounds at 0900, I could see a warbler in the bottom panel as we walked up to the net. I said to Gail, "what the feck is that"? When I started to extract it, I could see that it was a Subalpine Warbler, but which one? We closed the nets as we knew it would take us a while to sort it out, and we didn't want to be continuing to catch birds, whilst working on the Subalp. This was actually a bit of a nuisance, as we had been catching quite well up to that point.
I phoned Ian, as I knew if he was at home, or at work, he could be on site in about ten minutes, and he was. As you will know, Subalpine Warbler has been split into three species; Eastern Subalp, Western Subalp, and Moltoni's.
This was quite a grotty individual, and it had an awful lot of wear on its plumage. Certainly not in keeping with a bird that had a complete moult last summer. There was some rufous to the underparts, more than we would expect for a female, but nothing like an adult male. It had a cloacal protuberance, but not overly swollen, so we concluded that it was a second calendar year male. But again, which one?
Some plumage details on the tail, which I won't bore you with, suggested that it probably wasn't Eastern, but without a DNA analysis, or recording of vocalisation, it would be impossible to tell. There have been five previous Lancashire records, and all have just been identified to the Subalpine suite, so Subalpine Warbler sp.
As is often the case when handling birds, some contour feathers from the body are often lost, sticking to your fingers, left in the bird bag etc, and we managed to retain two such feathers. These have been sent to Professor Martin Collinson for DNA analysis, so I look forward to hearing back from him. Fingers crossed we can get it to a species.
The bird was ringed, and processed, with the usual biometrics taken, and I took the decision to release the bird back into the trapping area. This is always the best course of action as this is where the bird was. However, we did consider whether there was anywhere close where we could release the bird to give other birders some possibility of seeing it, but because of the nature of the site there wasn't.
As I said before, we were catching quite well, and probably would have ringed more if we hadn't had to close the nets. Up until catching and ringing the Subalpine Warbler, we had ringed 18 birds as follows (recaptures in brackets):
Cetti's Warbler - 2 (1)
Blackcap - 3
Robin - 4
Lesser Whitethroat - 1
Sedge Warbler - 1
Great Tit - 1
Reed Warbler - 1
Grasshopper Warbler - 1
Siskin - 1
Whitethroat - 1
Chiffchaff - 1
Subalpine Warbler - 1
The Grasshopper Warbler was only the fourth ringing record for the site, and the first since 2017.
The following day we had another walk late morning along the estuary from the quay. It was sunny, and very warm, with a light northerly breeze. Insects were on the wing again with 18 Small White butterflies, lots of Buff-tailed and Red-tailed Bumblebees, two Large Whites, two Peacocks, five Common Blue butterflies, two Speckled Woods, and three Red Admirals. However, the highlights were two Hummingbird Hawkmoths foraging on Red Valerian. We had another Hummingbird Hawkmoth here five days later as well.
On 12th July, I had a walk along the estuary again, from the quay over lunchtime, and it was hot, somewhere in the region of 26 - 28 Celsius, and a number of the Gulls were panting. I even had a Cormorant in flight that was panting! As I was coming back along the quay, I heard all the Gulls alarm calling, the sort of alarm calling that is reserved for a large raptor. I knew it would be either a Marsh Harrier or an Osprey, and it was the former, a female/immature that was slowly thermalling and drifting south, with a Larid escort!
It is looking changeable over the coming week, so it will be a case of getting out during any weather windows if possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment