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.

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