Bradgate Park, 05/03/2025

We enjoyed a couple of sunny hours this afternoon at Bradgate Park. Ostensibly it was to get our granddaughter Ellie out for some sun and fresh air walking along, but I took along a MOL pheromone lure and the TG-6, because it would be mad not too. With so many ancient oaks, and a fourth consecutive day of sunshine, I fully expected a result with the lure and I was not wrong ....

Pammene giganteana, to MOL lure

What I wasn't expecting though was Tortricodes alternella also apparently coming to the lure. I was just exposing the lure in an open pot for ease, and at the first spot I had x2 fluttering about the trunk close to the pot. I could not exclude the possibility that I'd disturbed them whilst milling about the trunk. But at a second spot, another came to the pot but I watched this one fly in from some distance. So genuinely attracted to the lure, or just coincidentally day-flying.

Tortricodes alternella, to MOL lure?

I also found a fair few Luffia lapidella f. ferchaultella with the deep crevices of gnarly oaks, easier to find than get good photographs of. All on the shadier side of the trunks.

Luffia lapidella f. ferchaultella

Titchwell, 03/03/2025

Snaps from Titchwell on Monday 03/03/2025. This was a very regular site to visit on my annual birding calendar c30 years ago, and still feels like a special place despite the often big numbers of visitors. Even on Monday it was busy enough, and hide etiquette seems to have gone to shit with people babbling loudly about nothing to do with birds on view, no one asking for help or pointing anything out [despite clearly needing help!], and one couple loudly ferreting around to sort out their lunch in that they seemed to think was their private dining room.

Hunstanton, 02/03/2025

A few snaps from the chalk cliff end of the beach at Old Hunstanton on Sunday 02/03/2025.

North Norfolk Birds

Can barely remember how to post on here, having made zero effort to do so in over a year. I have been more active on my Bluesky account (@whetstoneskev.bsky.social) and have completely ditched my Twitter/X account. I should endeavour to post stuff on here for posterity too, though no idea if anyone really uses blogger so much these days.

Anyway, been getting some respite from yet more chemo with a trip to the sunny North Norfolk coast over the last couple of days, enjoying the sea air and watching some birds. We went to Hunstanton and Snettisham yesterday, and Titchwell today. I managed to point the camera at a few cracking birds, though numerous others were either too distant, too aerial or both. That includes many Marsh Harriers, and stunning swirling flocks of Knot. A partially hidden Tawny Owl was too shaded. I have a load of scenic shots on my phone that I haven't got time to sort now, but here's a selection of the better bird shots.

Gadwall, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Teal, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Pintail, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Bearded Tit, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Brent Goose, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Brent Goose, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Fulmar, Hunstanton 02/03/2025

Fulmar, Hunstanton 02/03/2025

And here's a selection of 'record shots' ....

Mediterranean Gull, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Curlew, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Sanderling, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Grey Plover, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Golden Plover, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Also saw more Muntjac in the two days than I think I've seen in my entirely life previously. Loads of them openly feeding on the roadside between Snettisham and Sandringham, and a couple feeding close to the main patch at Titchwell.

Muntjac, Titchwell 03/03/2025

Panning via BUBO

Anyone with a birding background will be fully aware of the BUBO Listing website that has been around for many years. Around mid-October, BUBO [essentially Mike Prince and Andy Musgrove] launched a long-held idea to provide a PSL add-on to BUBO, with the potential for 1000s of species to be added across the orders to provide a more managed repository for PSL lists than the existing numbers-only website. This then allows all listers to see what is and isn't on each others lists, with automated queries set-up to see what targets and blockers there are in each group.

The new BUBO hosted PSL site is here: Pan-species Listing by BUBO

Adding everything progressively as orders were released was easy initially, but by the time bryophytes, fungi, slime moulds and lichen were available I was already playing catch-up getting my list on. But it's done now, with lichens and then fungi added this evening. Overall it was quite enlightening as I found a number of duplications and omissions in the process. The old website is still there, but I'll not be using it after finalising the numbers to match BUBO as of today [4010 species].

One of my actual recent ticks is a very bizarre worm that is widespread and may be common, but given it usually lives in the sublittoral up to a 1000m deep beneath the sand/mud it is not usually found unless washed up after storms. I was in Devon for a family wedding, and we had a nice family walk along the beach at Westward Ho! where at least four of these bizarre things were along the tideline. I shuffled one into a shallow pool and saw it was clearly alive. Quite why something living up to such great depths beneath sand should have such dramatic iridescent coloured chaetae is beyond me!

Sea Mouse (Aphrodita aculeata)

Back in October 1982 I saw Depeche Mode live for the first time. The support act was Matt Fretton, and I remember nothing of him apart from one song that was released early the following year and became a very minor hit. But it was one of those songs you sort of never forget, even if never listening to it. I recently looked for the song on Amazon Music - nothing there. Probably not on any streaming services. Luckily though - as it seems is always the case - someone has stuck it on You Tube. So for the nostalgia here it is .....

13

Another year comes to an end. And if I were to look over to the right of the screen, a sum total of 13 posts during 2023 before this one suggests a year with absolutely bugger all to show for it. Nothing could be further from the truth of course; I've been busy recording and enjoying stuff, but it absolutely is true that I have been generally more VC55 and moth focussed whilst getting used to life with my 'baggage'. I've had more nights out mothing in 2023 than in the preceding five years total! I've enjoyed some great live music, some truly awful Premier League football and then some more rewarding Championship football, and am thrilled to now be a Grandad (Granddaughter arrived in late Oct). It's been the first year since 2019 that I've been at work for a whole year without enforced absence, and that year at work has been one of the most challenging for a whole host of reasons. And I have completed a full year as VC55 CMR with the associated workload that brings.

But I am hopeful that I can generate more opportunities to rediscover some PSL in 2024, and I should note that during 2023 I finally passed the 4000 mark without really trying.

In the meantime, peace and goodwill to all (with my customary exception of fascists, Tories, war-mongering Heads of State, and anyone who thinks that people like Matt Le Tissier have a point).

Iassus scutellaris - Whetstone 23/07/2023 [first VC55 record]

Nematus alniastri - Huncote Embankment 24/07/2023 [first VC55 record?]

Caliroa cinxia - Ketton Quarry 13/07/2023

Chrysolina varians - Ketton Quarry 13/07/2023

Cryptocephalus moraei - Ketton Quarry 13/07/2023

Pristiphora leucopus - Lutterworth CP 09/07/2023

Aequsomatus annulatus - Cosby 30/08/2023 [first Leicestershire record?]

Medullary spots of Phytobia carbonaria in hawthorn - Whetstone 30/12/2023 [first VC55 record]

Caliroa cerasi - Whetstone 08/10/2023

Cladius grandis - Wigston 28/08/2023

Clathrus archerii - Sherwood CentreParcs 16/09/2023

Common Toad - Warren Hills 09/08/2023

Euura bergmanni - Whetstone 24/09/2023 [first VC55 record?]