Tuesday 3 June 2014

A Matter of Life and Death - Iron Maiden

Although we were away in Wales for the week-end there is still something of a backlog of images, mostly from last week, on file. In an attempt to relieve the situation these will be posted without date.
With no size comparison, it will have to be accepted that this was a rather large
COMMON SWIFT
and from the same family group
the even larger
(female) GHOST MOTH (or GHOST SWIFT)
the male, from where the name originates, is all white.
An extremely delicate and beautiful
BIRCH MOCHA
GREY PINE CARPET
MAY HIGHFLYER
MOTTLED RUSTIC
SMALL CLOUDED BRINDLE
The Micro
Crambus lathoniellus
In the Harbins garden complete with raindrops a
Dark Blue Iris
While over at Longham Lakes it was A Matter of Life and Death
on the 'down' side this
juvenile COOT only seems to have managed a couple or three days
before being predated, while a little further along
 
something else 'White' had met its Maker!
DOG ROSE
(I think John)
JACKDAW
HOUSE SPARROW
On the Life side a new generation of
COOTs
are on the move,
while noting the construction of this new nest
it looks like there could be a few more youngsters around
in the very near future.
One worrying point, there seem to be no juvenile Moorhens.
Maybe not hatched yet, the adult birds are still at various sites in numbers.
Meanwhile
 
CANADA GEESE
are still doing it and
getting angry at the prospect of an intruder.
Another concern has been
KESTREL
which were the subject of discussion the other day. Last year c2
pairs brought off a number of young in the Harbins Garden alone.
This distant 'hunting' bird, again at Longham, is the only one any
of us has seen for ages.
There doesn't seem to be much 'follow-up' to all the displaying
of recent days in the
GREAT CRESTED GREBE
department either. No nests have been detected while all pairs
seem to be content just swimming around together.
At a neighbouring site there was an addition to the List, yes couldn't resist it,
with this brief visit by a couple of
OYSTERCATCHER
GREYLAG GEESE
seem to be doing alright as well as this small squadron of
2 adults and 5 Goslings swam across the flood to feed.
Two quite interesting late additions as the first
SMALL MAGPIE MOTH
of the year, another Micro, was found in the traps 
while another first was far less welcome a
devastatingly destructive
VINE WEEVIL
Otiorhynchus sulcatus
for them it's just a 'Matter of Death'!
Finally, it just remains to note that Belgium is back in the Top Ten. We cannot believe this is a coincidence as that countries contingent were at the weekend wedding. If this is Jacob, Alex, Andreas, Lidde and Thea it was GREAT to have your company once again and we all send our Best Wishes.
Entry            Pageviews
United Kingdom
               1027
United States
                 352
Russia
                 133
Germany
                 132
China
                   29
Estonia
                   27
Ukraine
                   27
France
                   23
Spain
                   16
Belgium
                   12