Mark Lawlor's Nature Blog

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.

Minstrel Bug *(Graphosoma italicum***) -** Les Vicheries, 10 Jun 23

*Carpocoris mediterraneus atlanticus* - Mont Herault, 10 Jun 23

Parent Bugs - St. Germain Nature Reserve, 18 Jul 23

*Nicrophorus interruptus* - Castel, 17 Jul 23

“Hi, I’m Chloe, the newest member of the family. Nice to meet you!”

At some point during the first few days of May the portcullis slammed down hard and the flow of migrants stopped abruptly, which is not atypical for Guernsey. There was still a few birds passing, including this early morning Wheatear at Vazon which posed on the wall outside the car. Almost certainly some of the best photos I’ve ever taken of the species - and I’ve taken a lot.

Mid-month was especially quiet with the only notable sightings I recorded being a Bar-tailed Godwit on the beach by Vale Pond on 9th and a first-summer Med Gull feeding in a field at Portinfer on 10th. The latter was very unusual in Guernsey with only a few May records of the species ever, although it seems that this may become more common.

There was a bit more activity later on in May, with a late flurry of waders, the highlight being a female Ruff at Vale Pond on 21st which was masquerading as something much rarer as it fed near the back against the sun’s reflections. There was also a Yellow Wagtail and Black-headed Gull there, plus a few Sanderlings at Pulias that day. On 23rd, a larger group of waders was feeding along the shore at Richmond comprising 18 Sanderlings, 8 Dunlins and a Grey Plover. A few land migrants were seen at Rousse on 24th including a late Whinchat and two Reed Warblers singing in the reeds at the Peninsula Pond, which is not a common place for them.

On the final day of the month I was pleased to see that the Little Grebes at Gallotin Quarry had bred again and there was also a male Tufted Duck present. Late in the afternoon, I managed to see the lingering female Hen Harrier at Mont Herault and watch it from the car quartering the fields across the valley. At one point a Marsh Harrier came up and had a little tussle.

Hen and Marsh Harrier - Mont Herault, 31 May 23

There were no rare birds in May but the insects more than made up for it with some excellent records. I had managed to scrounge some Barn Owl pellets to use at school for my Wildlife Club and was storing them in a takeaway box in the Science office. I brought the box out into the corridor to show the pellets to a couple of year 7s and, upon opening, two small moths flew out like the clappers! It wasn’t a huge surprise because I knew that some tineid moth larva like to feed on owl pellets. However, one of the moths was a typical brownish-grey colour, but I noticed that the other had a very clear white patch on its wing and was potentially very interesting. I watched it fly off down the corridor just as the bell went for afternoon school. I told the kids to watch where it went as I dashed into the prep room for a pot. It was still flying amongst the throng when I came back out, and I chased it round the corridor, small children being flung in my wake. It then chose to circle round and land on my tie and I managed to pot it up.

Upon checking the books and records at home, this was clearly a Tapestry Moth (Trichophaga tapetzella) which is a rare and declining species in the UK, and the first record for Guernsey since 1898. By the end of the month at least nine individuals emerged from the pot of pellets, and their exuviae could be seen sticking out. All these pellets were collected from a Barn owl nest site near Torteval Church in the south of the island. The species could be widespread in the island just very elusive, or perhaps there is just a small colony left.

Trichophaga tapetzella (Tapestry Moth) - from Barn owl pellet collected in Torteval, May 23

During May I paid a weekly visit to L’Ancresse to monitor the site where I discovered Coleophora scabrida cases last year. I wanted to make sure I caught sight of the adults when they were on the wing. After a few blank visits, I finally saw them at dusk on 27th and there were a lot of them. They were very tiny moths, just a few mm long, and they didn’t really fly, just flicked about their foodplant, very low down in the the short coastal turf. I took a few for investigation and managed some photos despite them being very difficult to snap. The forewing pattern was quite variable but they always had a cream costal stripe. The basic ground colour was dark orange with a further one or two cream-coloured stripes halfway across the wing, often broken by black scales. However, the moths were variably peppered with dark grey scales, so that most were so dark that the pattern was obscured that they looked quite plain grey (albeit with a constant coastal stripe). This pattern seemed to fit pretty well with Coleophora scabrida photos online. I dissected one male and, although I found it difficult to set very clearly due to it being so wee, it did have the basic structure that fits scabrida. So the ID seems pretty sound, although I have heard since that the situation with this species may not be as simple as it appears…..

Coleophora scabrida - L’Ancresse, 27 May 23

Out with the family for a wander round the beach and Lihou Headland, I picked up a couple of small shieldbugs from the vegetation just above the beach. They looked unfamiliar and so I took one home. A quick look saw that they must be New Forest Shieldbugs, a species that I knew had been recorded by others here in the last few years, and I had seen some pics recently on the local Facebook group. The more I looked though, things didn’t quite look right - slight differences in appearance, and perhaps not the expected habitat. I did a bit of digging and I came across a species from the continent Eysarcoris ventralis, which is very similar to New Forest Shieldbug and has been called White-spotted Shieldbug in English. There is at least one record of this from Jersey and I came to the conclusion that not only my specimen was this species, but all the pics of local New Forest Shieldbugs I could find seemed to be species also. Quite a few new shieldbugs are colonising Guernsey at the moment and this one seems to be too - indeed just the next day I found another one crawling along our utility room windowsill!

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