Spoke too soon...

The 2nd-winter Iceland seen in flight twice today at Allerton, and my visit interrupted by a conversation with one of the contractors.....the pools ARE due to be filled in, progress stalled by the recent weather.  What a shame, and a wasted opportunity.

Allerton Tip Iceland Gull

The one advantage of these very breezy days is that the gulls at Allerton will at least be all pointing in the same direction!  This helps in looking at and assessing shades of grey and any darker (or paler) backed gulls stand out that much better.  With the winds from the north today, most of the gulls were actually rear-on, rather than the usual side-on.  No repeat of the 2nd-winter Iceland from last Friday, and the gulls were very flighty, being put up by a couple of Red Kites which looked fantastic in the low bright sunlight highlighting every hint of colour in the birds.  It soon became obvious that many of the gulls were actually in the dip the other side of the bank.  I drove round to look from the farm road parallel to the old A1, and waited for the gulls to fly up. With the sun now right behind me and the distant sky dark grey and dropping curtains of snow, when the gulls flew up they really stood out against the background.  Sure enough, the 2nd-winter Iceland Gull was soon picked out among the hundreds of Herring Gulls, and it lazily flew off to the north.

So, the threat of the first washing pit to be filled in may have passed, indeed the earth-moving equipment seem to have excavated another deeper pool just to the north of the main pit.  Perhaps my unacknowledged correspondence with the land-fill company actually worked - who knows.....

Colour-ringed Godwits

Back in September I posted on my visit to south-west Ireland and added some photos on a couple of first-year colour-ringed Black-tailed Godwits at Roscarberry, Co Cork.  They were part of a flock of c.500 birds, mainly first-years, and the two colour-ringed birds were observed in close proximity for several hours on 19th September.  The rings are as follows:

Bird 1 on left:  Left leg - pale green over dark green    Right leg - red over yellow flag
Bird 2 on right:  Left leg - dark green over black    Right leg - yellow over yellow flag

Black-tailed Godwits

I scoured the internet and found several addresses for people who carried out Black-tailed Godwit ringing and sent off the details.  Not having heard anything I rather gave up hope, but out of the blue I received an email this morning from a Peter Potts with details on the birds.  Both birds, as suspected, were Icelandic, having been ringed there earlier in the year.  Their ringing details are as follows:

Bird 1 on left:  ringed in the southern lowlands of Iceland - details to follow.
Bird 2 on right:  ringed on 1st July 2012 at Klettur, road 60 north of Kroksfjardarnes in NW Iceland at 65 28 976'N 21 56.631'W.

Ringing site, photo P Potts

Ysbrand Galama and Dan Hoare, photo P Potts

Bird 2 in the hand, photo P Potts

1700km from ringing site to where I saw it in Ireland

2012 and all that...

Far too long since the last post, although to be fair I have been rather unwell for five weeks and just not had the energy or inclination to do anything demanding on the computer let alone go out and do some natural history watching!

So, 2012, a year of ups and downs at best, and continues the run of cloudy and often unsettled weather of the last six years, due to the more southerly path of the jetstream.  Presumably as a direct result of the shrinking polar icecaps and unlikely to reverse anytime soon, and rather depressingly a portender of summers to come.

On the ornithological front, probably the worst in 40 years of active birdwatching.  Other than the occasional visit to Nosterfield, watching the gulls at Allerton and a brief few days in Ireland, the impetus to get out and about has been further dulled by the modern birding scene and obsession with rarities, and opinionated mediocrity.  The few highlights were the decent run of white-winged gulls in the spring, fantastic regular views of Red Kite, dawn-choruses of waking marshland birds at Staveley, some decent seabirds and wonderful Choughs on the Irish west coast and the only BB rarity of the year, a Semi-P on a beach in Ireland.  Hardly a vintage year.

Red Kite

A productive year on the moth front with just under 10,000 identified of at least 435 species, despite coverage during the year being very patchy.  No trapping was attempted during the very wet April into mid May, mid August to early September, and thereafter were just single visits to Pilmoor in mid-October and November.  The range of sites was much more restricted this year, concentrating effort on the sites closer to home, mainly Pilmoor and Sessay area and Staveley; there were no visits to my usual sites on the North Yorkshire moors or visiting under-recorded 10km squares around the county.  With 36 nights out against 45 in 2011, the reduced number of sites and the gaps in coverage, makes the totals achieved rather more respectable.  There were five macro-moths which were new to me, and about 35 new micros, their identification assisted greatly with the new book by Sterling and Parsons, and the status and distribution of moths in the county made available for the first time on the Yorkshire Moths website. Referring to the website, which currently is up-to-date to end of 2011, I have tentatively applied some figures to my rarer catches.

481	Epermenia falciformis	1st VC62
849	Syncopacma cinctella	2nd VC64 and 3rd Yorkshire
854	Anacampsis blattariella	5th VC62
878	Batrachedra praeangusta	5th VC62
930	Gynnidomorpha alismana	1st VC64 and 6th Yorkshire
968	Cochylis nana	3rd and 4th VC62
1086	Hedya salisella	4th and 5th VC62 (the 3rd was mine too)
1089	Apotomis semifasciana	4th to 8th VC62 (all the others are mine)
1104	Endothenia quadrimaculana	5th to 8th VC64
1106	Lobesia reliquana	1st and 2nd VC62 and 7/8th Yorkshire
1123	Ancylis laetana	3rd to 7th VC62 (all of which are mine, one other site in Yorkshire)
1132	Epinotia subocellana	2nd VC62
1135	Epinotia demarniana	6th to 12th VC62 (all VC62 records mine from 1 area and confirmed)
1137	Epinotia tetraquetrana	3rd VC62 and 4th VC64
1217	Eucocosmomorpha albersana	2nd Yorkshire record since 1987, the 1st was mine in 2011, a handful of older records
1225	Pammene obscurana	2nd VC62 and 5th Yorkshire (I had 1st VC62 too)
1348	Parapoynx stratiotata	2nd VC64
1473	Ephestia elutella	1st VC65 and 12th Yorkshire
1517	Adaina microdactyla	5th VC64
1523	Oidaematophorus lithodactyla	3rd VC64

Once all of the 2012 records are included and published in the Yorkshire database some of these figures may have to be updated, but it is certainly an indication of the quality of the years trapping.

My moth of the year?  Well, it has to be this one, a Bordered Pug at Staveley, not particularly rare but a stunning pug all the same.  This was followed very closely by the remarkable sight of six Lunar Thorns together at Brimham, my only previous ones being a single at Brimham and one in my Dorset garden.

Bordered Pug

What for 2013?  Other than the pressing requirement to achieve a more stable economic base for the family, I look forward to concentrating my efforts locally again, with perhaps also some selective effort on the southern fringes of the NY Moors, and looking at other orders to broaden my interests.

Bugs ... and everything

Too cold at night to tempt me out trapping but a very pleasant afternoon on Thursday 1st and a brief excursion to Pilmoor.  I suppose I have developed a further interest in the site after preparing a report for Natural England who manage part of the site as a SSSI.  As I was short on time I concentrated checking the beech trees at the SE corner looking for leafmines; on the same date in 2009 I had seen a few mines of Stigmella tityrella and I wanted to repeat this and also to look for the other beech miner Stigmella hemargyrella.  Despite a thorough search of the beech I could not find any mines at all.  However I did find a shieldbug at rest on a sycamore which I photographed.

Hawthorn Shieldbug

Having got home and looked up the literature and web resources ( http://www.britishbugs.org.uk/index.html a superb site!) the bug was identified as Hawthorn Shieldbug Acanthosoma haemorrhoidella.  

Buoyed by identifying such a good-looking insect I trawled through my photos and located another three shieldbug species all for Pilmoor: Birch Shieldbug, Red-legged Shieldbug and Common Green Shieldbug, all of which are reasonably common.  It did set me thinking especially after visiting Mark Telfer's site (superb for beetles) where there was a section on pan-listing.  I did a quick tot up of the species in which I was interested and was surprised to come up with a total list of c.1700 species.  With about 73% of this made up with moths and birds with many fewer (now that's an oxymoron...) vascular plants, butterflies, mammals, fish etc., there seems to be plenty of scope for bumping the list up...if I could be really bothered ;-)

A new one for Pilmoor

Having not done any trapping for weeks now, probably mainly due to the lack of mild, calm and dry nights, along with a general malaise that sets in as moth numbers plummet, Saturday 20th Oct looked a good night to do some trapping.  Pilmoor was the easiest and closest site to home and four hours in perfect conditions produced 46 moths of 12 species.  The highlight, although not realised at the time, was a December moth, which was new for site.  Amazingly I have only had one other record, and as its name implies is a late flier, and obviously under-recorded due lack of trapping effort in late autumn.  

Taxa
1044x  Acleris ferrugana/notana  1
1048  Garden Rose Tortrix (Acleris variegana)  2
1062  Acleris emargana  1
1631  December Moth (Poecilocampa populi)  1
1769  Spruce Carpet (Thera britannica)  1
1795x  November Moth agg. (Epirrita dilutata agg.)  27
1923  Feathered Thorn (Colotois pennaria)  8
2126  Setaceous Hebrew Character (Xestia c-nigrum)  1
2247  Merveille du Jour (Dichonia aprilina)  1
2258  Chestnut (Conistra vaccinii)  1
2263  Red-line Quaker (Agrochola lota)  1
2477  Snout (Hypena proboscidalis)  1

Acleris emargana

Noah can rest easy now....

Now ten days or so since the floods here in Langthorpe it was time for some photos of what the river should look like.  Not entirely true as there was torrential rain last night and the rather muddy water is about 50cm above normal levels; this is still 5.5 metres lower than last weeks record level.  The following pic shows some Giant Hogweed suspended in the willow to the left, which gives an indication of the flood level.  

In addition, the white water level scale attached to the bridge which tops out at 15.75 metres cannot be seen in last weeks photo!

Also compare the next photo with last week, now the detritus that was backing up against the bridge has gone.  Such blockages cause extra strain to the structure and the bridge was closed for 4 days allowing engineers to check the integrity had not been compromised.

Our house is actually just west of here and the water levels are artificially kept higher there due to the weir and the lock gates on the Milby Canal.  So the water level needs to 'fill in' the lower level river east of the weir before the level rises on our bit of the river.  It was still squeaky bum time for a while....

 

Here is a photo of our building, then a brewery for Mustill Brothers, and looking at the vehicles it must be around the 1920's.