Friday 31st May 2019

The second half of May can sometimes produce something outstanding but, more often than not, it is quiet. There were no rarities to go twitch and I didn’t find anything notable either. So spring just petered out. I went for a walk round Pleinmont on 19th May and managed to get there at first light which is something of a novelty for me these days. In the Societe fields two different Sedge Warblers were singing away and a single Whinchat was perched up. That was more or less the sum total of migrants though and so the highlight of the morning was bumping into the male and female Cirl Buntings feeding on the turf by the clifftop, just west of the BBC field. They have been very elusive for the month or so they have been present and my snap below is apparently the first pic of both birds together!

Pair of Cirl Buntings - Pleinmont, 19 May 19

On the way back I stopped off at L’Eree and saw the rarest bird of the day, a fine (!) Canada Goose nibbling the grass on the Aerodrome, with a Brent Goose for company. Records of this species in Guernsey are still in single figures. After coming back down from the goose-high, I popped in to the hide at the Claire Mare where the wintering Spoonbill had now been joined by a second bird, both of which were typically asleep.

Spoonbills - Claire Mare, 19 May 19

Common Sandpiper - Claire Mare, 19 May 19

The most atypical sighting during this period was the pair of Fulmars that I drove past on the way to work at Albecq on 21st. Every now and then I see a distant Fulmar offshore from the patch but these two were gliding along the rocky coastline right alongside the road. I spotted them as they were passing the Guet and then they carried on west, skirting the headland then into Albecq Bay, over the road to Fort Hommet then back out to sea when they reached Vazon.

On 28th May I had a nice walk down to the mooring at Le Gouffre, somewhere I had never been to before, and took lots of photos. A new plant was Wood Spurge which was so obvious that I was surprised that I hadn’t recorded it before. A Hairy Yellow-face Bee was a new species also and if you look closely at the photo, you can see that it has a little hitchhiker! This is something I have never seen before - the larva of an Oil Beetle. These little larvae wait around on flowers and grip themselves onto any passing bee that lands. They then ‘ride’ the bee back to its nest where they jump off and continue their development in the bee’s nest. Fascinating stuff.

Hairy Yellow-face Bee (with oil beetle larva) - Le Gouffre, 28 May 19

close up of the oil beetle larva

Le Gouffre, 28 May 19

Le Gouffre, 28 May 19

Gouffre, 28 May 19

Wood Spurge - Le Gouffre, 28 May 19

Swollen-thighed Beetle on Sheeps-bit - Le Gouffre, 28 May 19

Volucella bombylans - Le Gouffre, 28 May 19

Cryptocephalus vittatus - Le Gouffre, 28 May 19

potter wasp (Eumeninae sp.) - Le Gouffre, 28 May 19

Milkwort flower - Le Gouffre, 28 May 19

Polydrusus formosanus - Le Gouffre, 28 May 19