Monterey Pelagic - 8th August

One more off my bucket list... a sea-bird boat trip off the west coast of the US.  An all-day trip over the deep-water canyons off Monterey produced fantastic numbers of sea-birds, not so much variety as still a little early but nevertheless a fantastic experience.  To start with I did manage a handful of US ticks, rather disappointingly all stuff I have seen in the UK: Northern Fulmar, Common Guillemot, Arctic Skua and Red-necked Phalarope.... but then the new ones were Flesh-footed Shearwater and a fine Tufted Puffin.  The sort of numbers were 50+ Black-footed Albatross, c.10,000 Sooty Shearwaters, several hundred Pink-footed Shearwaters, three Arctic Skuas, 100+ Red-necked Phalaropes, 100+ Common Guillemots, c.20 Pigeon Guillemots, three Rhinocerous Auklets and the Gulls included Western (100's), Herring Gull, Heerman's Gulls, and several California Gulls.  A shame not to get any petrels or rarer shearwaters but am not complaining; something to do another day.  Here are a few photos from this trip.

Black-footed Albatross

Black-footed Albatross

Pink-footed Shearwater

Pink-footed Shearwater

Pink-footed Shearwater

Sooty Shearwater

Sooty Shearwater

Brown Pelican

California - 7th August

While the rest of the family had a whale of a time at Universal Studios in Hollywood I took the opportunity to aim for the coast.  Heading due west to the Mugu State Park near Santa Barbara and then followed the coast road from there round to Malibu and Santa Monica.  Only the one marshy estuary next to the military base at Point Mugu held a few distant water-birds and a few waders.  A selection of photos from various places along this coastal route:

Brown Pelican

Elegant Tern

Heerman's Gull

Long-billed Curlew

Wandering Tattler

Willet

Willet

Hopefully a few sea-birds to follow on next posting......

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.