June/July 2023 — Just A Bird

The start of June can often bring a rarity, and this year a Night Heron appeared at Vale Pond on the evening of 4th. As I live close by it was easy to pop up to see it, although it was hidden from view when I got there. Only after a while did it fly out from behind the reeds and chose the very far side of the pond for fishing. This was, of course, the second of the year after the bird in April and not a surprise after the nationwide influx, this perhaps being a bird returning south back into Europe.

On an evening walk on 6th June, I was just getting back into the car when I heard the classic “squeaky gate” of a young Long-eared Owl. This was at a traditional if irregular nesting site so it wasn’t a surprise to hear one. We listened for a while and caught sight of an adult bird keeping an eye on us, silhouetted against the sky. We soon realised two youngsters were calling and I made some recordings.

Spectrogram of the Long-eared Owl calls near the end of the recording - the middle two traces are two youngsters calling at the same time, one slightly closer than the other (the darker trace). The frequency of each “harmonic” (line) in the call is almost exactly the same for both birds, however the shape of the bar seems to be slightly different for each.

One interesting aspect of the spring was a very visible Peregrine nest on the cliffs. Usually the nests there are quite inaccessible and it is practically impossible to see into them without some mad climbing skills. It was interesting to observe at least 3 chicks start from being all fluffy still at the end of May, to being ready to leave the nest less than a month later. A few pics of the stages are shown below. Even though the exact location is pretty well known, I will leave it nameless here in case they return next year. It was very open and easy to get to, so I was concerned about the survival of the chicks to adulthood, either by accidental disturbance or perniciousness. However, pleasingly, the fears were unfounded and the juveniles left the nest.

There was not much bird activity other than that, but things perked up a bit in the final few days of July, with a few Whimbrels and Common Sandpipers seen, as well as a Common Tern with the Sandwiches off Fort Doyle on 29th. A Manx Shearwater came really close in to do a circuit of the small bay there as well that evening. There were many shearwaters out to sea towards the Humps, but the numbers appear to be lower than in recent years.

There were a few nights when moth-trapping in the garden was excellent since the weather was still and warm. Recently, rather than a scatter-gun approach to garden trapping, I have been choosing my nights more carefully depending on the conditions, which seems to be a much more efficient way of finding new things. Late June and early July were hot and I found three great new species for the garden - Pediasia aridella, 2 Acrobasis tumidana, Diplopseustis perieresalis. All these were probably immigrants from France, the latter, frustratingly, flew off as I was manipulating it for a record shot!

*Acrobasis tumidana* - garden, 24 Jun 23 - note the raised scales along the mid-line, a key identification feature.

Lesser Broad-Bordered or Langmaid’s Yellow Underwing - Garden, 25 Jun 23

I managed to see a lot of good moths out in the field also in June and July. The most exciting one was when I went with Andy M to Corbiere one breezy evening on 21st July to look for some south coast specialities. The highlight of the evening was finally ticking off the moth that is named after the island - Guernsey Underwing. It is a very tricky species to see here as it only really gets caught to light on the south cliffs, which is well away from my northerly garden, so I am unlikely to see it at home. So, one has to be mobile with the moth lights, but I don’t have the equipment for this myself, so I had never seen it before. Unfortunately, I was only able to take snaps with my phone but you can see the greenish colour to the upperwing and bright orange hindwing - a pretty unmistakable combination. Agonopterix umbellana was another new species for me that evening.

Guernsey Underwing - Corbiere, 21 Jul 23

I found another new moth for Guernsey at Les Vicheries, when I snapped a pic of an Argyresthia pygmaeella on 10th June. At the time I just thought it was a faded individual of a more common species, but I didn’t click it was resting on Willow, the foodplant for this species.

*Argyresthia pygmaeella* - Les Vicheries, 10 Jun 23

On 12th July we had a visit from micro experts Phil and David who came over mainly to look at the Coleophora scabrida cases that were in abundance again this year. They showed us various other things whilst here including a nice easy way of searching for Fiery Clearwing locations, by looking for their eggs on stems of small dock/sorrel plants.

Fiery Clearwing eggs - Bordeaux, 12 Jul 23

Beautiful Plume - Les Vicheries, 10 Jun 23

Hoary Footman larva - pleinmont, 24 Jun 23

*Swammerdamia pyrella* larva - SSHS area, 26 Jul 23

One of the most spectacular insect finds of the period was a couple of Minstrel Bugs (Graphosoma italicum) along the edge of the field at Les Vicheries. An absolute corker of a shieldbug, there is certainly no difficulty in identifying these wacky creatures dressed in their AC Milan replica kits. These are a recent arrival but don’t seem to have spread very wide yet. Also, seen the same day was another recently arrived shieldbug, Carpocoris mediterraneus atlanticus, found on the clifftop vegetation at Mont Herault. I don’t know the reasons in particular, but shieldbugs seem to be amongst the vanguard of insects moving north due to climate change.

Just A Bird

Just A Bird

Mark Lawlor's Nature Blog

Just A Bird

Just A Bird