Wooden jetty/harbour
Black Guillemot: pair on or below the wooden jetty
Turnstone: 17 on wooden jetty
NO sign of any Shag
North harbour wall
Med Gull: 1st summer patrolling the wall briefly perhaps indicative of last winter's returning bird.
Outfalls/Red Nab/Ocean Edge foreshore
Med Gull: Between us we managed 2 x Adult (one different from yesterday), 3 x 1st S (one possibly the NHW bird) and one x juvenile
Kittiwake: 1st summer
Common Tern: 1
Sandwich Tern: 1
Whimbrel: 3
Nature reserve
Common Sandpiper Obs Tower pond
Middleton IE
Kingfisher on 'no swimming' pond
Insects
2 x Black-tailed Skimmer, 8 male and one female Emperor & lots of Common Darter, mainly tenerals, on Middleton IE
2-3 Brown Hawker Heysham NR
A surprisingly good variety in the moth trap, despite ridiculously low numbers of common species such as Clay (1) and Common Rustic (4). New for the year were: Olive, Ruby Tiger, Cabbage Moth & the local fleabane-eating pyralid (or the larva do!) Ebulea crocealis. Olive and Cabbage Moth are quite scarce here.
Butterflies included four Gatekeeper on the reserve and a few Small Heath still flying on Middleton IE
Elsewhere
No sign of the Lesser Yellowlegs and two of the Spoonbills appeared to disappear early morning leaving Allen/EM Pool highlights for much of the day as one Spoonbill and 5 Little Egret. JBP saw two 1st S Little Gull, Spotted Redshank. As was shown by the WTP, this does not mean the LY is not in the hidden area on Leighton Moss which will becoming more suitable with falling water levels.
Stairend Bridge, Upper Hindburn revealed a nice pocket of calmish air around the favoured elms and there were 5 White-letter Hairstreak (& at least one Purple Hairstreak) at 1630 and earlier one (of these) was nectaring on Creeping Thistle:
Thanks very much for this excellent shot, Gary
