Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Thursday, 1 September 2011

Various Bits

Ran the traps last night - haven't had a chance/been bothered to transcribe and enter the records yet but suffice to say it was pretty much more of the same as yesterday with the exception of this first for the year:

Centre-barred Sallow

I also potted up and finally made the effort to ID one of those nasty looking Ophion things that I have an irrational loathing for (one of several mothing villains that I really would prefer was not in the trap). Didn't manage to get a photo as it would not sit still and I didn't want to get too close to it, but it was Ophion ventricosus - one of the bigger and uglier species. See here for someone elses photo.

This evening whilst out on the bike (trying to make this a daily event, not quite there yet) I stopped to look for a few leaf mines. Basically I'm rubbish at doing leaf mines, and it's something I really ought to make some effort with this year. I did find one or two more Bedelia somnulentella mines, plus a couple on hawthorn, sallow, field maple and oak to mull over in conjunction with the excellent leaf mines website.

The only other thing I did this evening, finally, was get a positive ID on the local bats. I acquired a heterodyne bat detector at the birdfair (I only bought non-birdy things), but as sods-law dictates the local bats which patrol over the close and garden for 10 - 15 minutes every evening have been complete no-shows ever since. Tonight though I did get one, giving the distinctive sound of Common Pipestrelle at 45kHz (sounds like an old analogue synth I used to have doing a resonant bass flippy-flappy high-tempo random arpeggio).

Traps are out again tonight and I'll post a proper summary tomorrow evening. Expect there will be a few more of these:

Garden Carpet

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