Nice morning for my Breeding Bird Survey

A small dinosaur

Mouse in the bathroom...

Flowers before the rain

 

photos taken with iPhone 4S

Who lives in the roof?

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Suburban birds

I spent the Jubilee weekend and bank holidays at my parents' house while they were away enjoying themselves in France. Eventually it stopped raining and I did a bit of ringing...

Collared Dove

It's pretty difficult to catch Collared Doves in mist nets; being a bigger and faster-flying bird, they tend to bounce out easily or can wriggle their way to freedom. So I was lucky to get my hands on this male.

Male House Sparrow

Juvenile Starling

Adult male Starling

Goldfinch

Juvenile Dunnock

Moulting adult Blue Tit

Moths that burn, blush and... look like twigs

Getting out of bed not long after dawn is tiring. But I'm really enjoying going through the contents of the moth trap (I leave the bulb on overnight and get up early before the moths start flying away). I never quite know what's going to be in there...

My first-ever Chocolate-tip

The Herald

Eyed Hawkmoth

Burnished Brass

Maiden's Blush

Scorched Wing

Buff-tip

Treble Lines is making a bid for top spot, with 26 trapped overnight.

also

• Angle Shades
• Buff-tip
• Burnished Brass
• Chocolate-tip
• Cinnabar
• Common Carpet
• Common Swift, 6
• Cream-bordered Green Pea (no photo, sorry)
• Eyed Hawkmoth, 2
• Figure of 80
• Flame Shoulder
• Green Carpet
• Heart & Dart
• Herald
• Large Nutmeg
• Lesser Swallow Prominent
• Light Brocade, 11
• Light Emerald
• Maiden's Blush
• Oak Hook-tip
• Orange Footman, 6
• Pale Oak Beauty
• Pale Prominent
• Pale Tussock
• Pebble Hook-tip
• Poplar Hawkmoth, 7
• Scorched Wing
• Setaceous Hebrew Character
• Shuttle-shaped Dart
• Silver Y, 5
• Spectacle
• White Ermine
• Willow Beauty

The charge of the Light Brocade

Meet the Pale Tussock

Check out the amazing furry legs!

Lime and Poplar Hawkmoths

White Ermine

Brimstone Moth

Coxcomb Prominent

Pale Prominent

Pebble Prominent

The Lychnis

The Miller

Orange Footman

Pebble Hook-tip

Treble Lines

Rustic Shoulder-knot

Look... I know it's a shocking post title, but I could not resist.

No large numbers of anything (not even Light Brocades), but nice diversity.

• Brimstone
• Cinnabar, 4
• Common Carpet
• Coxcomb Prominent
• Flame Shoulder, 4
• Green Carpet
• Light Brocade, 3
• Lime Hawkmoth
• Lime-speck Pug
• Lychnis
• Miller
• Muslin Moth
• Orange Footman, 2
• Pale Prominent, 3
• Pale Tussock 
• Pebble Hook-tip, 2
• Pebble Prominent, 2
• Peppered Moth
• Poplar Hawkmoth, 4
• Red/Dark-barred Twin-spot Carpet
• Shuttle-shaped Dart, 2
• Spectacle
• White Ermine, 2

The hawk has landed

Poplar Hawkmoth

Angle Shades

Muslin Moth

Light Brocade

Flame Shoulder

Things are picking up slowly...

• Poplar Hawkmoth, 2
• Muslin Moth, 2
• Flame Shoulder, 3
• Shuttle-shaped Dart, 1
• The Spectacle, 1
• Angle Shades, 1
• Hebrew Character, 1
• Green Carpet, 1

May moths and May bug

The Spectacle... you can guess where its name comes from

Side-on view of the Biggles moth

Swallow Prominent

Lesser Swallow Prominent

Shuttle-shaped Dart

Cockchafer (or May Bug)

A slow start to moth trapping in May, with six moths caught:

• Cinnabar, 2
• Swallow Prominent, 1
• Lesser Swallow Prominent, 1
• Spectacle, 1
• Shuttle-shaped Dart, 1

Who's been making a mess?

What's going on here? Looks like someone's been busy with a chainsaw

Ah! A freshly-excavated Green Woodpecker nest hole

photos taken with iPhone

Constant Effort baking and ringing

Nightingale!

This morning saw the year's first Constant Effort Site ringing visit to Paxton Pits. And it was a good one - 65 birds of 18 species caught in total, including 13 retraps (birds we'd ringed earlier).

The first bird out of the first net we put up was this Nightingale (probably a female), and we had another later (a male which sang as he flew off when we released him). We also caught Lesser Whitethroat, Whitethroat, Garden Warbler, Blackcap, Sedge Warbler, Reed Warbler, Willow Warbler - but no Chiffchaff. We'll get them later in the season.

It's nice to have a sit down and something to eat during CES ringing (we start pre-dawn and finish around lunchtime). Last year I made a lot of flapjack but this year I'm going to try to produce 12 different baked delicacies.

Today's recipe was pineapple and carrot muffins. They went down well.

photos taken with iPhone

All things bright and beautiful

 

This morning I was out bright and early (and cold and windy) for the first stint of my Breeding Bird Survey (BBS). It was pretty uneventful - I wasn't chewed by a horse and I met the man who used to have this stuff on his gate.

But surprisingly, the best bird was the first one I heard as I entered my square - a singing redpoll! I did hear one calling on another BBS visit a couple of years ago, so I wonder if it warrants more investigation. That would probably be quite a good breeding record in Cambridgeshire these days...

I also found three singing Lesser Whitethroats in the final three sections I was surveying, which was good, though I'm guessing they may not stick around for my next visit in a month's time.

Then, at lunchtime I found a male Redstart! A real blink-and-you'll-miss-it job. I saw it once and it vanished. That was annoying, but the Greenland Wheatears I saw a couple of minutes later helped make up for it.

photo taken with iPhone 4S

Long-tailed Tit babies

 video taken with iPhone 4S + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

What are you looking at?

The first Robin I've caught in my garden!

photo taken with iPhone