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).
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| Acleris holmiana |
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| 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.
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| 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.
Hi ,good to hear from you.Beauttiful china mark was new to me at Newtondale this year,it was probably the commonest macro ,on a warm night interspersed with downpours.Hope to get out a lot more this year into the nym national parks hills and dales.Best wishes G.F.
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