Our Day Will Come - Ruby & the Romantics (1963)

 but not before checking the Moth Traps to find New for the Year

a couple of and just a little early

HEART & CLUB

in the wake of a

COMMON FOOTMAN
Across the South-side the

HORSE CHESTNUT's

are just about bowing under the weight of fruits but as in the previous year not a sign of an
ACORN.
At the heart of the main Solar Panel Compound the continuing and most welcome host of common juvenile Birds again captured our imagination along with the finding of this trio of

PINE HAWK-MOTH (top), FOX MOTH (below) and EYED HAWK-MOTH (left).
Part way through our appreciation of nervy juvenile

LINNETs

and far more obliging young

GREENFINCH
before spotting a low flying apperition streeing a course of 090°.

As a forerunner we do see a very occassional one at the Avon Causway just 3 miles away, and slightly more frequently others at Longham Lakes, the same distance but in the opposite direction, but never, despite our hopes, on home turf during our 9 years of monitoring this patch!

We secured no images during this brief transit, more interested in achieving a possative ID, but this blagged photo shows a near perfect similarity of our observation with an archive clip from

Radipole Lake
and

'still' believed to be from
Farlington Marshes?

All else involved more juvenile

MISTLE THRUSH
and

STRARLINGs
both to be gone in the near future,

and as if by way of salute of our good fortune, a fly-past by

H.M. COASTGUARD HELICOPTER
Ruby and her Room Mates certainly had this one right!

Blue Moon - Billie Holiday

 Despite the

FULL MOON
likely detracting the Moths from the Traps we did get a little joy

by adding both

SMOKY WAINSCOT
and

SHEARS
to theYear List but that was about as good as it got!

At the Ponds,

no more than this single

WHITETHROAT
singing its head off in pursuit of a partner.
In sheer frustration we climbed the gate onto the Heath in hopes of more but the vast majority were made up, with just a couple of exception, of the inanimate!

A cluster of

BITING STONECROP
and a second excavation for the benifit of the

SAND LZZARDS
which were absent

flowering

BROOM
with not a single Butterfly in sight, and as for birdlife

nothing more than c5

LINNETs

COMMON BIRD'S-FOOT TREFOIL

before a second excavation and as something of a 'space-filler' we also 'clicked' the

BOG MYRTLE
with attendant

FOXGLOVE
Clambering back onto home-turf we encountered yet another

RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGE
NO WONDER THE READERSHIP IS DWINDLING!!

Silver Machine - Hawkwind

 Well, despite the suggestion of abandonment we struggle on for now at least, but the futher we venture into Summer the less likelihood of 'interest' for our valued audience with this

CLOUDED SILVER
being all to add to the Year List while also from the traps and maybe of interest singles of

LONGHORN BEETLE

one of the various representations of
HARLEQUIN LADYBIRD
along with an

ICHNEUMAN WASP
Sureley one of, if not 'the' SCARCITY of the year, for our patch at least, was located before even tumbling the padlock combination to access the first Solar Panel Compound the unmistakeable 'reeling' of a

GRASSHOPPER WARBLER
only our second ever here and a sculker that we have never capture on film, and in our dotage, are never likely to and bringing our annual Bird tally to a reasonable (for a postage stamp) 115.

Nowhere near as scarce

but far more handsome this male

CHAFFINCH

just sitting in narcissistic pose.The second and last of the unexpected was a lone 'fly-over' adult

MEDITERRANEAN GULL
(image from the archive)
and back to the Warbler theme as both

SEDGE WARBLER
and

REED WARBLER
have joined the other vocalists at the 2 northern ponds

while last on parade this posing

SMALL TORTOISHELL

with numbers, like every other species, being desperately low!

S'cus Me While I Kiss the Sky - Purple Haze.

After the absence of any 'New Comers' from the 2 traps at home it was a bee-line to the first of the Solar Panel Compounds. At the gateway there could be heard the familiar 'chacking' of an unseen

RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGE
  sufficient evidence to prove, for now at least, they continue to dwell within and now to get lucky with the traps, and that is how it started in the second egg-tray a single

SPINACH
not rare but we do know of other like-minded people who would value one if in their own Back Yard! Digging deeper just as valued, to me at least, a

handsome

PURPLE BAR
and to make up the hat-trick a single

GREEN PUG
among the overnight cluster of 260 Macro Moths of 50 species!

The drive up north now takes us along a patch of

FLEABANE

which appears to be to the liking of both juvenile and adult

GREENFINCH 

while around the main pond the young

CANADA GEESE
are strating to show the pale 'face patches' patches of adult birds and better stilL one of the wayward

LITTLE GREBE

are they going to have another crack at it?

has found its way back to the Irrigation Pond after a leave of absence, while at least c2 'vocal'

SEDGE WARBLER

appear to have found the area to their likeing as well?
At the second SPC nothing was found to add to the
Moth Year List
but not for the first time we did find yet another

free flying

PRIVET HAWK-MOTH
once again clinging at a fence post and additionally a small

MURDER

of juvenile

CARRION CROWs

and ending with the vestiges of last weekend's
5's Rugby Tournament and this weekend's Music Festival on the nearby
Bournemouth University Playing Fields.
Security was ultra-tight but most polite and pleasent, as stopping for a chat both outward and inward. Asked if the music and other disturbances were bothering me, it would have been rather caddish to say yes as a vetran of the 'first' Bath Blues Festival (held on their rugby pitch), 3 days at the first Isle of Wight Festival, which broke my heart when missing my all time hero (James Marshall) Jimi Hendrix, due to commitments on H.M. Submarine Alcide sailing early (04:00) on the following day (but did see his helicopter arriving at mid-night while bording the ferry back to Pompey) little succour as he died just 17 days after the event, having since paid tribute to the greatest Axe-Man who ever lived, and the first Reading Festival along with a number of subsequents visits!

Jimi's second and final resting place in the
Greenwood Memorial Park, Renton, Seattle, Washington State, U.S. of A.
R.I.P.