Hello there, what a lovely evening it is! Hopefully some of you who are reading this will have spent it at Old Moor. Sadly I didn't and I also don't have many sightings for you... I have a tale of woe again as my RSPB email has decided to lock me out and therefore no sightings from the book....
So, via Twitter from the Barnsley Birders there are the following sightings - a Bittern, 3 Little Egret, 5 Mediterranean Gull, a Hobby, 3 Buzzard and a Cetti's Warbler.
From Adwick via Gary Stones there are sightings of - 15 Avocet, 2 Black Tailed Godwits, 2 Snipe, 1 Oystercatcher, 2 Ringed Plover, 7 Little Ringed Plover, 1 Common Sandpiper, 155 Lapwing, 2 Buzzard and 2 Kestrel with 3 juvs.
Karen kindly put the moth trap on last Friday evening and we had a pretty good count of moths early on Saturday morning. Here are a few of my favourites.
Peppered Moth - I'm sure you can tell how it got this name!
This moth is a very beautiful swallow tailed moth. One of my favs, as was the peppered moth.... :)
This gorgeous moth is a female ghost moth.
Then there was a curious looking buff tip moth...and yes, it does look like a twig! Can you find the eyes of this moth?
This beauty actually has this in its name - a beautiful hook tip.
I don't know very much about micro moths but this little spotted being is a bird cherry ermine moth. It's about 5cm long in real life.
If you are wondering, the moth is on one of those drink stirrers that you might find in our lovely cafe. The moths seem to quite like sitting on them and yes, I washed it after I'd had my drink!!
This video is of a poplar hawk moth warming up before flying away. There were three of these moths in the trap on Saturday.
There was another hawk moth in the trap too - an elephant hawk moth which is stunningly pink!
It seems like it is a good year for the day-flying burnet moths. As I wandered around the ponds last weekend they seemed to be everywhere I looked. Here are two of them making more burnet moths. :)
Finally for today a sighting last weekend that made me smile. One of our growing puss moth caterpillars (Geralds) had pretty much eaten all the leaves on the plant it was on...
A good way to potentially find caterpillars is to look for branches with few leaves on shrubs. This might indicate that a caterpillar is eating them. Geralds are currently found around the ponds should you wish to try to find one.
Definitely worth looking for in my book.
If you are interested in moths and are wondering how you might see what's around in your garden, then read this moths blog that I wrote last summer.
That's it, Andrew tomorrow.