California ..... here we come

Second evening here and just had our evening meal in the Hard Rock Cafe on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.  Just sorted the tickets for Universal Studios for the rest of the family while I intend to go off looking for waders tomorrow before the long drive up to Monterey.  This morning we took the beast of a car up the mountain to see the famous sign before the kids took the open-top bus tour of the famous stars homes....

 

However this was not for me, I managed several hours at Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Refuge having a wander. It took a while to get back into birding Stateside and had a few good views of interesting species rather than any numbers of rare or unusual species.  A selection of photos for starters:

California Towhee

Fox Sparrow

Green Heron

Ground Squirrel

Pied-billed Grebe

juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk

American Swallow-tail

Turkey Vulture

Two more sleeps....

Getting excited now...just two more sleeps before off to California for a holiday with the family which will no doubt offer plenty of birding opportunities.  I might even get some new birds (missed Yellow-billed Magpie twice now), and hopefully get some new sea-birds on a Monterey deep-water trip, but what I am looking forward to most is taking some photos.  It is still a painful memory losing my camera and all my rolls of film (remember them?) when I had my rucksack stolen outside the Tucker Reserve in Orange County 35 years ago.  Watch this space for some of my efforts over the next couple of weeks.....

A good night at Kilburn

At last a couple of days off, the first for weeks.  The night of Friday 11th July looked the better of the next two nights so set up a couple of traps at Hag Wood, near Kilburn, my first visit there for 2 years.  As ever the site proved interesting a several moths caught were new for the site, indeed, two were new for me, one (1170 Gypsonoma oppressana) probably new for VC62 and the other (1216 Cherry-bark Moth Enarmonia formosana and not 1245 Grapholita janthinana as originally thought) only a handful of sites in VC62.  In addition and perhaps most frustratingly I had a small pale Aethes with two parallel oblique brown stripes, considered to be 0951 Aethes beatricella but considering how scarce it is in Yorkshire and with no VC62 records I failed to pot it and take a photo....one that will not get past Charlie I'm sure.

I will be honest in that with so few mothing events over last 12 months or more I found myself to be very rusty, and a little overwhelmed with the micros, along with a shortage of pots!  Many were common species and it was only those that looked interesting which were potted along with single specimens of the commoner species.  The grey tortrix complex were ignored as were several Coleophora and other difficult species.  It still turned out to be a good night....

0946 Aethes rubigana

1111 Bactra lancealana

1170 Gypsonoma oppressana

1200 Eucosma hohenwartiana

1216 Cherry-bark Moth Enarmonia formosana

1762 Dark Marbled Carpet

1947 Engrailed/Small Engrailed agg.

At last!

Despite my best intentions I have just been too busy with work to do any moth-trapping.  Far too many hours and not enough days off.  Still, helps pay the mortgage....

On 6th June I spent an evening at Brimham Rocks, drawn out of hibernation by the prospect of a relatively warm night with little breeze and no rain.  Having dug the generator and traps from under a load of hay bales in the tack room I eventually coaxed it into life.  So, having loaded up all the equipment I set off to Brimham and parked in the upper car-park setting up a trap on a heathy bit and the light over a sheet on the main track surrounded by trees.  I got the generator going again and all seemed fine for 30 minutes or so, and then the generator faltered and stopped.  Blast!  With much harrumphing I started putting the traps away and then noticed that I had forgotten to loosen the fuel cap and that through use had created a vacuum.  I reset the light over a sheet and retired to the car, revelling to the sound of roding Woodcocks and calling Nightjars. As dawn broke a check of the eggboxes did not produce a massive haul but the highlight was undoubtedly three Lunar Thorns.  This was the same location I had six together a couple of years ago so not entirely unexpected.  Unfortunately my attempts to photograph the Thorns failed as they were just too lively.

Last night, I set the 125w MV Robinson trap on my parking space next to the house in Langthorpe, siting it taking great care not to shine into any of the neighbours windows.  A modest haul overnight, nothing particularly exciting among 35 species but at least an opportunity to take some photos.  At least I am up and running for the year!

Elephant Hawk-moth

Gypsonoma dealbana

Hedya nubiferana

 The next micro may well be just a Timothy Tortrix but is it pale enough and lacking any yellowish tinge to be Aphelia unitana?

tbc....

POSTCRIPT - Charlie has since advised that unlikely to be unitana which is a moorland species and rare on the lower ground.  So, most likely to be Timothy Tortrix and I must try and get one up on the moors to have a chance.

2013 and all that....

So that was 2013 and time for a bit of retrospective comment.  The biggest change was getting back into meaningful employment which has obviously alleviated the drain on limited funds but played havoc with any attempt to do any serious mothing since April.  I did, however, still manage two new micros and two macro moths, one of each on the same night after a renewed attempt to trap on my front step (Acleris holmiana and the nationally scarce Plain Clay).  

Acleris holmiana

Plain Clay

The other newbies were the well-named Beautiful China-mark at Staveley, and the accurately named Cream-bordered Green Pea in my brother-in-laws Warwickshire garden on a brief visit.  

Beautiful China-mark

The lowest numbers and variety in 10 years trapping but hopefully will make some more time to make amends this year.

As for birds absolutely nothing of note this year, no new ones, hardly surprising as little effort made to look.   All my good intentions to broaden my interest to include other families also fell by the wayside.  Still, it was not all gloomy news on the Natural History front…. In the three months before starting work in late March I did achieve my goal of developing and populating the Dorset moth website which went live in April.  The ability for others to add their own latest sightings removed a huge responsibility from me and I am pleased how it has been embraced by the regular contributors.  Other than the occasional bit of house-keeping the website looks after itself and is building an excellent photographic resource and given a bit of breathing space to Les to thoroughly check the past records before importing the new and fully verified data to replace the current dataset.

On a different note I have had the pleasure of driving some very tasty vehicles in 2013; it comes to something when you can be so passé about driving your third Aston of the week, or fourth model of Porsche in three days, interspersed with a 28t horsebox to Aintree racecourse.  A quick tally of mileage for September alone came up with just under 9500 miles for the month, helped by three roundtrips in four days to Hickstead near Brighton, and a 661 mile round trip to Scotland in a day…good job I enjoy driving.

Here is to an enjoyable and healthy 2014 which I hope to be able to share a little more often than of late on this blog.

Planes, trains and automobiles……

Well, not many planes these days (after 28 years in aviation) but more trains and automobiles than I have ever used…..

One of the benefits of travelling around the country is seeing some of Britain’s great scenery and while on the train is seeing some familiar places but from a different viewpoint.  Only last week on a drive to Aberystwyth I noticed a roadside RSPB sign with Ospreys on it.  Returning along the same route by train while looking out of the window in the Cors Dyfi Nature Reserve I noticed an Osprey sitting on a nest platform and another perched in a tree nearby, less than 100m from the railway.  Not even realising that Ospreys were breeding in Wales I have since looked into it and it seems they have at least attempted to breed in the Glaslyn valley since 2004.  Not a bad bird to see from the train but does not match the Great Bustard claimed by an eminent Victorian naturalist from a train on Shapwick Heath in Somerset, 22nd September 1870.....

On a different note I joined the Plymouth-Dundee train at Taunton heading north a couple of weeks ago.  It was some time before I noticed that a speck on the window just adjacent to the passenger in front was actually a tiny moth rather than a bit of nasal detritus….  On close inspection it was an Cameraria ohridella the Horse Chestnut Leaf-Miner and when the train was pulling into Leeds I attempted to scoop the moth onto some paper in an attempt to photograph it with my mobile.  Typically the moth took to flight and was lost to view; did it fly out of the opening door or remain in the cabin?  On thinking about the scenario I mused on whether this was an import into Leeds from down south possibly even from Plymouth, or could even end up in Scotland if it remained on the train.  Was this one of the dispersal methods (unintentional of course!) of this dramatically expanding species?  What if it was a purely southern species, could I count it for the counties we travelled through including Yorkshire?  Oh well, not really a valid argument.

No photos of either the Ospreys nor the micro-moth, so here is another car from recent weeks…..

Three traps in a week!

On the night of Friday 5th July I spent the night at Brimham Rocks in preparation for a Bioblitz planned for the Saturday when various experts were due to be present to try and identify as many species as possible in a 24hour period.  So, I got the ball rolling operating three traps overnight and despite ideal conditions, only managed about 80 species of the usual suspects for Brimham.  The highlight, at least for me, was Ancylis myrtillana, a moorland micro which I had only seen for the first time at this site last year.  Fortunately, for the benefit of the general public who were due to visit during the daytime, I had a good selection of the more colourful moths for their benefit.  These included, Barred Yellow, Peach Blossom, Garden Tiger and Elephant Hawk-moth plus a few of the more regular brown jobbies.  Unfortunately I had to leave for work by 10:00am, but by leaving my potted specimens in a cool place for others to see worked ok.

Trap 2 was at Wellesbourne in Warks at my Brother-in-Law's garden on Wednesday night.  A well-stocked suburban garden adjoining farmland, and the prize was a Cream-bordered Green Pea.  This is a species that somehow never seemed to venture north of Dorchester when I lived in Dorset, and is relatively scarce up here in Yorkshire.  With the Warks County Recorder David Brown only living 3 miles away in Charlecote, I sent him my records as usual, and he commented that he had only had the 2nd and 3rd county records in his garden, so mine was a notable local scarcity.

With this fantastic run of warm weather continuing, Saturday night meant trapping at Staveley NR just 3 miles from where I live.  With three traps around the furthest hide, a double gladiator actinic in the reeds, a Robinson on the main path between the trees and the waterside herbage, and the 160 MVB over a sheet next to the reeds in the more open grassy area.  Despite the early morning mist that bordered on drizzle, there were almost 900 moths of 116 species was the prize, including a new one for me, a Beautiful China-mark.  I had had one before but it escaped before I could pot it and photograph it.

Beautiful China-mark

The highlights among the rest were two Large Clover Case-bearer, six Elachista atricomella, a Metzneria metzneriella, a Syncopacma larseniella/cinctella, a Brachmia blandella, nine Mompha ochraceella, an Endothenia quadrimaculana, three each of Lobesia abscisana and Phlyctaenia perlucidalis, two Adaina microdactyla, three each of White Satin and Double Lobed, 15 Silky Wainscot and two Blackneck.

Large Clover Case-bearer

Metzneria metzneriella

Brachmia blandella

Mompha ochraceela

Lobesia abscisana

Spilonota ocellana

Crambus pascuella

Adaina microdactyla

Green Pug

Shoulder-striped Wainscot

Silky Wainscot.

It is worth bearing in mind that the micro-moths featured here are mostly less than 10mm in length, indeed the plume moth shown microdactyla which is the smallest of the plumes and had a wingspan on less than 20mm. You do not have to be big to be beautiful....