Giving insects a home

Southbound bird migration hasn't really got into full swing yet, so our attention has focused this week on some of the smaller winged animals that make their home at Conwy. Volunteers Rob and Ruth Morgan conduct a weekly transect walk around the reserve, monitoring butterflies, dragonflies and bumblebees, while Bob Evans spends nights here catching moths, when the rest of us are fast asleep.

Rob and Ruth had a busy survey this morning, with nine butterfly species (including large skipper, the second-generation of common blues, and comma), four bumblebees (including the recently colonised tree bumblebee), and just two dragonfly species - but one was a golden-ringed dragonfly, an occasional visitor here from upland habitats. But the most abundant insect were the six-spot burnet moths, of which there are thousands here at the moment, occupying virtually every flower head - look at thistles, knapweed and field scabious and you can't fail to see one.

Last weekend's Big Wild Sleepout provided an opportunity for many families to come and spend a night sleeping under canvas at the reserve. Bob brought his moth traps, and we waited impatiently on Sunday morning to see what he'd caught, having a good look at impressive and colourful species such as poplar hawk-moth, ruby tiger and garden tiger (in the photo above by @wildtraps).

But while we were all being impressed by the colourful ones, Bob had his eye on two rather mundane moths which he was certain were barred rivulets (above). He was quite excited by this because he remembered catching a single one here last summer, and he knew they are a very localised species around the UK, and especially in North Wales. Now confirmed, these three individuals have proved to be the first records in our vice-county (Denbighshire) for 40 years. And the last record, in 1976, was in Glan Conwy - before the nature reserve had been created, so they've presumably been hanging on somewhere for all that time.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be looking carefully at their food plant (red bartsia) to see if we can find any caterpillars, and so prove breeding here.

The Big Wild Sleepout was a lot of fun, with Gwynedd Bat Group helping us to hear several different bats species calling at high-frequency, and local astronomers showing us the stars and the International Space Station (the white streak in @JonathanHarty's excellent photo).

Bird-wise, waders this week include green sandpiper, dunlin and black-tailed godwits daily, while rain last Friday (29th) brought turnstones, greenshanks and whimbrels. An Arctic tern was a surprise on Monday morning (1st), and it looked much healthier than one found washed up on the shoreline the previous day. A water rail (today) is the first seen here for several months, but kingfishers have been seen or heard almost daily. A flock of a dozen linnets have been feeding regularly on the grassland behind Carneddau Hide, and visitors also reported twite on the causeway over the weekend.

A family of young shovelers here for a few days are puzzling us. They are well-grown, but we didn't see them as chicks - could they have been hiding from us the last few weeks. If they did hatch here, it's the first ever nesting record for the reserve.

Finally, the great white egret that stayed for ten days left overnight on Thursday 28th, though not before @PeteWood1981 took this stunning photo of it bathing. The black tip to the end of the upper mandible proved useful when we spotted a photo on Twitter of a great white egret that arrived at the RSPB's Langford Lowfield nature reserve in Nottinghamshire, and we're pretty certain that was 'our' bird. Is it now back on the Continent, we wonder?