Saturday 20 June 2015

Down on the patch again, New moth, Plus Hummingbird Hawkmoth

First thing this morning I looked out of the window and to my delight I could see a Hummingbird Hawkmoth on the Valerian outside, it hung about long enough to get this....



This is the 4th sighting in the last few weeks I guess it must be different moths each time but it is the first time in the 8 years we have lived here that I have seen them.

For the afternoon I headed out to do some dragonfly watching, this failed, as although it was warm obviously the lack of sunshine had put them off from flying.

So I stuck to birds and any other wildlife I could find on the patch.

Birds....

A pair of Little Grebe have built a nest very close to a hide and currently have 6 maybe 7 eggs.




When she (?) leaves the nest she covers the eggs in the damp weed and when she returns she removes the weed to sit on the eggs again I captured this on this video.


Other birds of note were two Green Sandpiper, Little Egret and Cuckoo.

But here are a few shots of the other birds spotted.




Also saw this very dark Buzzard, not a bird I have seen in the area before.

I also had a go at getting my first decent shots of Goldcrest nothing amazing but check out the crest on the last picture.




The light was all wrong but what light there was really highlighted that crest.

Butterflies

Like the Dragonflies, butterflies where thin on the ground Speckled Wood was the only other Butterfly seen apart from those below.

Meadow Brown


Two Red Admiral



Moths

Saw a few more moths that Butterflies. Seeing another Hummingbird Hawkmoth, a Cinnabar, 8 Yellow-barred Long-horn and 9 Common Marble...

20+ Common Nettle Tap


1 Silver-ground Carpet


And a brand new moth which I saw two of a White-barred Gold - Micropterix aruncella


Damselfly/Dragonfly

The only dragonfly seen a Four-spotted Chaser


Did see Large Red Damselfly, Azure Blue and these which I think are male and female Blue-tailed Damselfly



Other Insects and animals

This Orange Ladybird was cool


Have no idea where to even start looking for this....


Frogpole (it still had its tail)



and just because it looked nice...


1 comment:

  1. Your green insect with the alien-like head is a type of sawfly, probably Rhogogaster viridis.

    ReplyDelete