Spring is a boing!

Recently the weather has greatly improved on the whole and over the past two weekends there has been much wildlife to see. The moth trap has come out and from its winter hibernation, yet more birds are singing and plants are flowering and leafing.

Last weekend, the moth trap had two airings and I even managed to catch two new species for my garden. Its amazing after trapping for about 11 years there's still new species to be seen. The newbies were: Satellite, which I failed to get a picture of, and a Dotted border. The satellite is amazing as its name suggests, there is a bright yellow dot on its wing with two smaller 'satellite' dots beside it!

I was reminded of why the enforced effort to get up earlier and empty the moth trap is so lovely. Not only is it a surprise to see what lurks among the egg boxes in the trap, but one can listen to the birds singing their hearts out as they stake a claim to their territory. None more so than the Sky lark Alauda arvensis.

What always makes me inwardly smile when I hear them outside my back door is how people read things in the popular press about such species being in decline - which indeed they are. However, because these folk do not really know the bird at all, they go along with what they read! On a couple of occasions I have had neighbours bemoaning the declines and claiming they no longer hear or see sky lark locally while I then gleefully point them in the direction of the one I am listening to while they speak!

Date	10 March 2012
Species	Total
Common quaker	6
Small quaker	3
Satellite	1
3 species	10 individuals
Date	11 March 2012
Species	Total
Oak beauty	3
Common quaker	13
Small quaker	4
Hebrew character	1
Dotted border	1
5 species	22 individuals

Oak beauty (c Rotton Yarns)

Dotted border - a new species for the garden (c Rotton Yarns)

Following emptying the moth trap on the Sunday morning, the weather was so nice I was tempted to take walk in part to see if there were any birds of prey out displaying. I was indeed not disappointed, with two separate groups of buzzard, a group of 4 and 3, soaring and mewing at each other. Besides the birds I recorded and list below, I also caught site of a Brimstone butterfly.

Species

Skylark

Rook

Crow

Jay

Raven

Jackdaw

Wood pigeon

Collared dove

Stock dove

Great tit

Blue tit

Coal tit

Long tailed tit

Goldcrest

Nuthatch

Treecreeper

Robin

Dunnock

Wren

Chaffinch

Goldfinch

Linnet

Siskin

Blackbird

Fieldfare

Great spotted woodpecker

Green woodpecker

Starling

Buzzard

Sparrowhawk

Kestrel

I also managed to see my first Hawthorn bushes in leaf along a sunny lane near home. 

Leafing Hawthorn (c Rotton Yarns)