Shades of Black

A much cloudier night meant that the temperature did not drop so far and so there were rather more moths, last night's catch, in no particular order, was: sallow 8, large yellow underwing 8, light emerald 2, pink-barred sallow 8, Acleris emargana 1, black rustic 1, lunar underwing 6, frosted orange 1, setaceous hebrew character 2 and snout 4. The black rustic was the first of the autumn, when they are fresh, which they rarely seem to be, they are very dark, with a distinctly gothic look. The thorax especially is very black and the wings have a velvety look with patches matt and others with a slightly coloured sheen.
Both Ibsley Water and Ivy Lake had good flocks of hirundines feeding over them, however the roughly 400 birds over Ibsley Water were mostly swallow c250, sand martin c100 and house martin c50, whilst those over Ivy Lake were overwhelmingly house martin c300, with just about 30 swallow and 10 sand martin. There were also more wigeon about today, I don't know how many, probably only tens, but certainly noticeably more than yesterday.

The pink-footed goose was on Ibsley Water again as were 15 Egyptian geese, at least for a time. The great white egret was also present for a good part of the day. Yesterday's dunlin was still on the shore by the Tern hide, but a party of 3 dunlin and 2 ringed plover at lunchtime were new, the dunlin group had increased to five by the end of the day and I suspect these did not include the juvenile from the Tern hide shore.