The Bagsy Blog: SNAIL - Smashing Pumpkins

Tuesday, 20 October 2015

SNAIL - Smashing Pumpkins

The welcome patch of decent overnight temperature and complete cloud cover has continued which, along with darker mornings, has meant a few Moths and a bit of a lie in. The latter however will be short lived as lighter mornings start in just 5 days time, don't forget 02:00 Sunday 25 October 2015! Nothing startling, but over the past couple of days we have seen more

BRINDLED GREEN
a nice little run of various patterned

COMMON MARBLED CARPET

BRICK
along with a small selection of others including from left

PALE MOTTLED WILLOW, BRIMSTONE MOTH, RUBY TIGER
and another BRICK which took a little while to 'train'!
Additionally, there was a rather strange looking

GIANT DIVING BEETLE
with what appeared to be 'white cataracts' or maybe they were
'contact lenses?

The Insect was photographed and then placed in the fridge to see
if any change took place.

It did, 30 minutes later and the white veneer had disappeared.
The Gravel Pit has been all but devoid of bird-life since the small
fall of Grey Wagtail, some days ago now, so nice to see a representative of
the Waterfowl even if only an import

CANADA GOOSE

which took one look at me

with this being the second shot.
and there's more

from behind the tiny Island drifted the c2

MUTE SWANs

which were formally on the Irrigation Pond.
If this continues we'll be submitting stuff to the Rarities Committee if we aren't careful!

At the western end of the Sewerage Farm hedge (distant) the
Phase III Solar Panel Engineers

have started to muster their equipment, and we are told that they expect
to be 'on line' before Christmas. Looks like a 'tall order' to this casual observer,
but in addition unlike the existing panels the power from these will be
connected directly to the overhead power line close by.
Talking of which, the next visit was to a couple of the compounds
where small bird numbers have increased dramatically over the past week.

LINNET

for instance, have easily topped the 300+ mark while

REDWING
are now represented daily by small passing flocks of thus far no more than c16.

SKYLARK

never that numerous are thought to be here in 10's rather than 100's.

Coincidental or not, the first sight on Merritown Heath was the
NATIONAL GRID HELICOPTER

While works continue apace with the Balancing Pond
(although to me there seems to have been rather a lot of digging and
back-filling in recent days)

Luckily once again there was chance to chat to a couple of the Civil Engineers

who tell me that once 'this' pipeline is laid, ('click' the image for a larger view)
the concrete culverts should arrive and their words,
"by next week everything should be back to how it was".
Perhaps again the words of 'casual observers' but for my money this
area will never be the same again. Soon to become a watercourse,
plenished by the over-spill of the Moors River and its small tributary,
expectations are high for some good birds in what will be more or less
a 'human-free area'.