Thursday 8 August 2013

No Bonaparte's Gull

Heysham Obs
Looking down the seawall towards the outfalls, there seemed to be reasonable coverage this morning on the incoming tide, although a 'dread' on Red Nab shifted a lot of gulls to the south before they had been really checked

Med Gull - 2 ads, 2 juvs, 1 3CY, 2 2CY
Little Gull - ad

Office area
Lesser Whitethroat - 5 ringed
Otherwise one Whitethroat and two Willow Warblers, a Robin and a few Greenfinches

Moths
Crescent in the toilet trap a very good record.  Small Wainscot new for the year, otherwise an unremarkable catch with Straw Underwing now very much taking a bow until another year and usurped in the numbers stakes by Six-striped Rustic, Flounced Rustic and Dotted Clay plus the usual hordes of Shaded Broad Bar

Wednesday 7th August

Heysham Obs
Sorry still having problems accessing this site for updates on my home computer - managed to get the HTML to work last night but it wouldn't 'allow' spacing.  I'll try fiddling about again with it tonight

Outfalls area
No sign of the Bonaparte's Gull today but observers appeared to be searching rather too near to high tide - priobably best before 1000hrs. Similarly, only three Med Gulls reported on the latter stages of the incoming tide

Middleton NR
A decent catch of Swallows yesterday evening at Middleton with the roost increasing to at least 400. Also there seemed to be rather a lot of Sedge Warblers around after all the local birds had seemingly departed - quite a lot of contact-calling around the place. Despite a clear night, the CES this morning also saw a sprinkling of new Sedge Warblers with low double-figures of new birds as was also the case with Whitethroat. Just 4-5 Willow Warblers caught - all but one moulting/moult complete adults. 95% of the 'new birds' were warblers with not a single tit species caught - the flocks are just not passing through here and there seems to be a particular dearth of Long-tailed Tits at the moment

Moths
..saw Bordered Beauty and Oblique Carpet of note in the Middleton actinics