Ok...they’re not real elephants and tigers, but the warmer weather this week has resulted in a an excellent few nights moth trapping, including these amazing garden tiger moths and elephant hawkmoth...
The un-summer like weather conditions that we’ve had up here in recent months has meant that the trap hasn’t been out as often as we would like and only caught very small numbers when it did get put out. So opening up the trap on Wednesday morning and finding it full of moths was a very welcome sight! We recorded 29 species of moth over two nights including poplar hawkmoth, elephant hawkmoth, garden tiger (13 of these one night!), large yellow underwing, burnished brass, beautiful golden y, pebble prominent and dark arches to name just a selection. We’ll be putting the trap out as often as we can in the next few weeks, to see exactly what moths are around on the reserve and how many species we can record...
Bird highlights this week include 320 black-tailed godwit (the biggest number ever recorded on the reserve!), 220 lapwing, green sandpiper, 3 greenshank, 20 golden plover, ruff, 20 dunlin, marsh harrier, osprey and the reappearance of white-tailed eagle Red A.
This week we also say goodbye to our residential volunteers Becky and Heather, who have been staying with us for the past month. Thanks for all your hard work (especially all the painting!) and we hope you've enjoyed your stay with us!
Expert sign painters, Heather and Becky...
Oh man I missed all the good moths, knew there would be loads of garden tigers due to the number of caterpillars around just before I left. Was going to buy a moth trap until I saw how much they cost, might wait till I have money.