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Saturday 7 May 2011

Still No Poms - But Some Nice Moths!

Well I've given the sea as much effort as I could afford today - but to no great avail. I sea watched; 06:00 - 07:00, 08:00 - 08:30, 11:00 - 12:15 and 16:45 - 17:30. I did most of these from the Spot On Kiosk, except the late morning stint when I watched from Seaton Hole.

As the day went on the conditions got better and better, but the birding didn't! All that went in the notebook from these watches were...

62 Gannets E
25 Manxies W (one flock)
3 Kittiwake W
6 Sandwich Tern (2 E, 4 W)
1 Common Tern W
7 Razorbill
4 Black-headed Gull E

Yes it really was THAT bad!

As well as the sea watching, I managed a sweep along the Estuary which was rather fruitless, but an early evening visit to Black Hole Marsh was a bit better. 150 Swallow, 80 Swift and 60 House Martin were feeding over the lagoon - and all went up when my first Hobby of 2011 came bolting through. On the water, a drake Shoveler was a tad unusual for this time of year, but despite my best efforts - no Temminck's Stints yet. I see one place in Notts has got five of these little beasts - that's just greedy!

Now to moths, and last night the catch was smaller than I was expecting, with just 37 moths this morning - but the 19 species included a stonking new for the garden...

Puss moth - what a beauty!!!

The rest of the catch looked like this:

1 Red-twin Spot Carpet
1 Common Marbled Carpet
1 Brimstone
1 Waved Umber
1 Peppered Moth
1 Pale Tussock
1 White Ermine
1 Orange Footman
7 Shuttle-shaped Dart
2 Heart and Dart
7 Common Quaker
2 Bright-line Brown-eye
1 Hebrew Character
5 Treble Lines
1 Clouded-bordered Brindle
1 Light Brocade
1 Spectacle
1 Dark Spectacle

As ever the species in blue are new for the year, and here's a few photos of some of them...

Spectacle and (a rather early) Dark Spectacle

Light Brocade

Clouded-bordered Brindle

Bet you any money - whilst I'm at work tomorrow morning - flock of Poms will be parading up and down the beach!

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