Something For the Weekend - Divine Comedy

With the May Bank Holiday now some days away, it has taken us this long to catch up with the 'hundreds' of photographs and notes that would put War and Peace in the shade. Our Regular (and valued) Readers will not be surprised to know that the whole period was given over to Wildlife and who better to share it with than my Wildlife Friend and Mentor

DAVE FOOT

and
GANDALF
With our collective 7 Moth Traps cleared we set off in search of
some Daytime Fliers, and didn't have to wait too long.
High on the agenda was

EMPEROR (Moth)

but the 'male' in particular.
Unlike the

'female',
this one you may remember was caught on the 12th of the month
and shown again for comparison, he is only on the wing during the day
so by definition will not entertain the 'light traps' so other
strategy is required to catch these extremely fast flying Insects.

Now, we have just mentioned 'fast flying', well compared to the above

 this 'Daytime Dasher'

BROAD-BORDERED BEE HAWK-MOTH
is the Usain Bolt of this division.
We chose to show the Best First so now back to just a selection of the
Saturday Night Catch.
In all, the Macro Totals registered
Dave = 132 Insects of 52 Species
Myself = 37 Species to 225 Individuals
among them New to the Property and New for the Year  

LIME HAWK-MOTH

EYED HAWK-MOTH

A particularly 'dark' (morph)

FOX MOTH

and if you can see it, the well camouflaged

PALE OAK BEAUTY

and also a 'dark morph' of the same.

IRON PROMINENT

MARBLED WHITE SPOT

SHEARS

TRUE LOVER'S KNOT

GREY BIRCH

and if you need any more evidence that

We Don't Do 'Micros'

Dave does!
also in one of the traps the first

CARDINAL BEETLE

of the year, and while looking every bit distinctive so far
we have only been able to narrow this down to a

LATRIDIIDAE SPECIES?

answers on a Post Card please.

The Insects eventually taken care of it was time for a stroll and to

see what else was on offer.

SAND MARTIN

appear to be thriving at the

recently discovered colony.
There are now thought to be 8 'active nests-holes'.

juvenile
PIED WAGTAIL
seem to be just about everywhere, while we caught this

WOOD PIGEON

napping.
Plants included

YELLOW FLAG IRIS

an excellent cluster of

RAGGED ROBIN

OXEYE DAISY

and extremely colourful

RED CAMPION

To continue the 'Young Bird' theme,

no less numerous

than the Pied Wagtail above

and seemingly willing to

show-off.

recently fledged

ROBIN

with a short 'clip'.

MUTE SWAN

introduced their Cygnets

to the world on

Parley Pond

5 counted so far, while

COOT
have only just started incubating.
There is a warning however, better keep the kids well away from

GIANT RED-EARED TERRAPIN

Coot eggs, yum, yum!

and a quick update on the

TAWNY OWLs

with the parent bird still in attendance

as shown

keeping close watch on the

OWLET

short clip before going 'off piste.
With half of Sunday afternoon still available it was unanimously agreed
that we wandered a little further afield.

TITCHFIELD HAVEN
was the destination and I was already wincing at the prospect of the
£4.00 Entrance Fee
to this Council Owned Nature Reserve.
You've paid yer Poll Tax now it's time to 'stump-up' some more!

We struck lucky as even before we found a FREE car park
Dave had already spotted the target bird and said he was happy to go back now!

The
GREATER YELLOWLEGS

a 'vagrant' from the Americas had conveniently flown to the

Estuary outside of the Reserve so was on
FREE VIEW

A 'World Lifer' for Dave and new for me in Great Britain.
Many 'hundreds' of these elegant Waders must have been seen on my various travels,
and though distant this was thought to be the Best of the Bunch plumage-wise!
So, not a bad week-end considering we hardly left Slight Return II.

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