Portland - 8th October 2012

The moth trap at home held 11 Silver Y and 3 Angle Shades so with light south-easterlies and drizzle Duffy and I thought we would head over to Portland to see what may be lurking thereabouts.

We bypassed  Lodmoor as it was quite foggy so not sure if the Short-billed Dowitcher would be visible (it wasn't seen all day it later transpired) and headed for Ferrybridge. The tide was quite high but not many waders were present, just 1 Grey Plover, 5 Barwit, 2 Sanderling a few Turnstone, Dunlin and Ringed Plover. A few gulls were in front of the visitor centre and Med Gull numbers swelled from 3 to 13 in the quarter of an hour we were there, also present were two 2nd winter Yellow-legged Gull. 44 Brent Geese were out on the water and passerines were represented by a Wheatear and a Whinchat in the car park.

Moving on to the Obs as soon as we got out of the car in the car park there we were hit by a wall of birds, mostly Chiffs and Goldcrests with plenty of finch action overhead. A Firecrest and a Pied Flycatcher soon appeared to add a bit of variety, not bad considering we hadn't moved more than a few feet from the car. The Observatory has done a wonderful job recently in buying up nearby land and just over the road from the Obs they've planted a good variety of plants to attract birds and these fields were teeming with Linnet and Goldfinch with a few Chaffinches and a couple of Brambling. A flock of 38 Skylark got up from a stubble field and there were at least 7 Stonechat and 3 Whinchat in the weedy fields too. Carrying on up to Helen's Fields several Robin were around and a rather noisy male Redstart livened up proceedings. It was quite hard going in the light drizzle and heavy mist but there was always a feeling that something good was just around the corner. Via Martin Cade's twitter feed we learnt of a Yellow-browed Warbler trapped and ringed at the Obs which would have been nice to see in the hand and as much as they are smashing birds I wasn't going to dash back to the Obs for it. Moving down to Culverwell several Chiffchaff and Robin were immediately apparent and a couple of Blackcap lumbered around. I made my way along the slightly overgrown net ride down towards the marshy area, it was alive with more Chiffs, Goldcrests and a Reed Warbler as well as what were probably migrant Blue and Great Tits. A couple of sycamores in the bottom corner (near the road) were heaving with yet more Chiffs and crests and after waiting about ten minutes and with arms starting to ache through having to lift the bins every few seconds a couple of wing bars popped into view, a Yellow-browed Warbler - nice. Andrew joined me, as he was viewing from the road, and we enjoyed great views of the bird and could see that it wasn't ringed so clearly a different bird to the Obs (in fact two were ringed there on the day). A Yellow Wagtail flew over calling and another Reed Warbler was in the vegetation adjacent to the road.

No photos today so here are a couple from a previous visit on 27th September

Convolvulous Hawk Moth

 

Funnel Cloud

And on the way home on the 27th popped into Lodmoor and nailed this within a couple of minutes and here's a crap digi-scoped effort:

Short-billed Dowitcher



Durlston - 7th October 2012

An early start over to Durlston Country Park as we had the honour of opening up the moth trap as the rangers were busy first thing with other duties - anytime lads!
A bit of a tricky start as when I lifted the bulb holder off the Robinson trap the bulb just disintegrated - in the words of Bart Simpson "it wasn't me"!! Anyway, with it being rather chilly overnight there wasn't an awful lot in there and perhaps the bulb had blown earlier as it was turned off when we arrived? A lone Silver Y was the only migrant and the two below aren't ones that I got in west Kent so it was good to see them despite them both being quite common.

Beaded Chestnut 

Frosted Orange

With plenty of finches passing overhead we decided to have a walk over towards the Lighthouse Gully (I love a good gully me). What a cracking bit of habo, though a tad more extensive than Dengemarsh Gully but I fancy finding a few bits in here over the years to come.

Lighthouse Gully

Bird totals were: Brambling 2, Merlin 1, Siskin 24 (small groups east), Bullfinch 6, Blackcap 43, Jay 8 (flock of 7), Brent Goose 2 west, Chiffchaff 12, Great Spotted Woodpecker 3 together on telegraph pole by lighthouse, Wheatear 2, Peregrine 1, Skylark 11, Song Thrush 6, Redpoll 4.
Looking forward to spending more time here to discover which are the best areas. With William moaning that he was hungry we decided that a late full English in Swanage was the order of the day.

Back at home we emptied the moth trap with similar results to Durlston although Deep-brown Dart and Pink-barred Sallow were nice to see as well as a Blair's Shoulder Knot and a Ted Rogers micro Phyllonorycter messaniella (Bradley and Fletcher no321 - sorry!!)

Deep-brown Dart

Pink-barred Sallow 

 Phyllonorycter messaniella (I need a decent macro for the micros!)

Grey Dagger 

The caterpillar has been parasitised by a waspy thing (ichneumon?) and it will become the food source for all the baby waspy things - so I'm told! Anyway, at least I can safely tick Grey Dagger without looking at it's bits!



Family day out - 6th October 2012

Sunrise over Poole harbour from the house

With my Mum and Duffy (step-dad) down for the weekend we thought we would all head over to Shell Bay via the Sandbanks chain-link ferry as it was a nice sunny day. It's just about a five minute trip on the ferry and we parked up just on the other side. Some great habitat around the car park but probably not best positioned for migrants but could be worth checking out occasionally as birds could filter up the coast to here and hang around before crossing the short stretch of water - always the optimist! Walking over the boardwalk there were a few Common Darter posing nicely on the hand rails.

Common Darter

We walked south along the beach where there is a lovely little inlet which would be great if it was undisturbed but like so many of our beaches etc they are over-run by "leisure" activities. The heathland starts immediately inland fron the dunes and I was pleased to see a couple of Dartford Warbler, a juv and an adult, the latter latching on to a Wheatear like they do with Stonechat. Keeping tabs of the Palace score via Twitter meant that Saturday afternoon emotions were typically all over the place, 2 nil down then 4-2 up with a nervy last ten minutes when Burnley brought it back to 4-3 but thankfully we held on for the three points, though how long we hold to Wilfried Zaha is another matter...

Anyway, this is where the Dartford Warbler were, looking back towards Sandbanks and Brownsea Island:

Shell Bay heathland

There were quite a few Red Admiral moving north along the beach but not much else lep action, nor for that matter on the avian front so here are a couple of landscape pictures:

 The Sandbanks ferry, with the opulent Sandbanks area on the right of the photo

Shell Bay

We thought we would drive the long way back via Swanage, where we enjoyed some delicious ice-creams and possibly the last of the sunshine for this year

Bye-bye Summer

Earlier in the day there was some decent butterfly action in the garden with the following two posing well:

Meadow Brown 

Peacock

Durlston Country Park - 30th September

Ok, so the first post on my new blog doesn't actually start with the main subject concerning Poole but there you go!

Our nine year old son (William), and I had gone over to Durlston CP late Saturday morning as it was somewhere I had never been but has had some good birds in the past as well as decent moths so I wanted to get a feel for the place. On arrival the car park was quite full and it was typically expensive (£2 for an hour) so I made my way to the centre to get some change. There was a friendly ranger at the desk and we had a brief chat about what was around and he pointed out a rather swanky screen display with all the records for that day so far, top of the list of moths was a species which I didn't recognise - a sort of Ancient Murrelet moment but not quite to the expletive ridden degree when hearing about aforementioned alcid on birdline for the first time whilst waiting for my bags at Gatwick after a lads week in Tenerife! Anyway, the moth in question was a Sombre Brocade which I later discovered was first seen at Durlston in October 2008 and is still the only site in Great Britain where they have been recorded (it is also a recent colonist to the Channel Islands). Keen to see the moth I asked the ranger if it was potted up somewhere but it had been taken off-site so no luck there. He did say that Bernard Skinner was trapping again that night and it might be worth coming back in the morning. With stomachs rumbling we looked at the food on offer at the "cafe" but it was more bistro than greasy spoon so we headed off to the delightful Swanage. After eventually finding somewhere to park I located a bakers and wasn't disappointed, two homemade Chicken and Mushroom pies (quality shortcrust pasrty), a doughnut, a slice of carrot cake and a large tea for just shy of a lady godiva - quality!! I won't go into details about the pie as I don't want to be accused of plagiarism!

Next morning William and I left around 6:30am and were at Durlston just before 7 but as it was a bit overcast Mr Skinner didn't arrive til nearer 7:30. After introducing myself to Bernard we headed off down to the furthest, and most exposed, of the three traps he was running. All very standard fare with just Rusty-dot Pearl, Rush Veneer and a couple of Silver Y being the only immigrants and Bernard stated numbers were well down on the previous night. Along to the next trap and again it all seemed very quiet, but thankfully it wasn't long before the main target was extracted from the trap -a Sombre Brocade. As the name suggests it's not the most colourful of moths but they're all attractive in their own way.

Sombre Brocade

The light wasn't great and as you can see I had to photograph it in a pot but I would hope I'll get a chance for better shots in the future. The only other moths of note were a Pearly Underwing and a Dark Sword-grass.

Dark Sword-grass

Birdwise there was plenty of vis-mig with several small flocks of Siskin and Chaffinch coming in as well as a couple of Redpoll. Hirundines were constantly passing overhead with Swallows outnumbering House Martin but I will confess to not making any attempt to count them. A single Yellow Wagtail was also knocking around. A succesful morning and big thanks to Bernard for allowing us to tag along.

Back at Poole I emptied my moth trap but there was nothing of any great significance, out of 43 macros 32 of these were Feathered Ranunculus.

 Feathered Ranunculus

I think this is a male and female, the left hand moth having the feathered antennae. 

A splash more colour was provided by this Sallow which is always a favourite of mine

Sallow

Thankyou for visiting my blog and I'll try and post on a regular basis.