Bird News: Ibsley Water - common tern 1 juvenile (morning only), ringed plover 1 juvenile, ruff 1 juvenile (still), swallow c180, house martin c40, black tern 1 juvenile (later in the day), great white egret 1 (the usual bird seen near the Lapwing hide pm.), wheatear 1.
Centre - lesser redpoll 1+ over calling, siskin 50+.
The moth trap was quite busy, but when I lifted the trap to go through it I noticed a fine violet ground beetle that had been hiding underneath.
Twenty-three species of moths was a good haul and it included the first spruce carpet of the year, a migrant rusty-dotted pearl and this bordered beauty.
Another, that I think is the first this year was L-album wainscot pictured below. This used to be a rare migrant, but it became established in Devon about eighty years ago and has spread along the south coast. The next few days look very promising for migrant moths, with warm conditions arriving from the continent, I have high hopes.
The trap still attracts a range of other insects as well, there are usually several caddis-flies, beetles and a few bugs. Forest bug is the most frequent, closely followed by birch bug, but today there was another Pantilius tunicatus which I do not remember seeing before.
As the season has moved on the sand martins, so much in evidence a week ago are pretty much all gone now. There are still house martins, but now swallows are the most numerous, not long ago I found it hard to pick any out in the swarms of martins. A feature of this autumn has been the number of siskins, for at least two weeks they have been flying over on most days and there are about fifty in the alders now. It seems they are having a bumper year with record numbers recorded on passage at more northern sites already, despite their migration usually peaking several weeks later than this in a typical year. Perhaps it is going to be a mega-finch winter.
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