Night, Night, Night

Yesterday local news broke that a trio of Night Herons had been located at Watermead CP North. By the time I'd picked that up though it was too late to bother, especially with the restricted arrangements for getting into the area where they were (which has always bemused me - it was better when the area was openly accessible without hides). So I hoped (and expected) that they'd stick and that I'd get a chance today. Quite early this morning though they all flew south ....

Luckily for me, and many others, not very far as they were relocated <1km south on Grebe Pool at Watermead CP Birstall. Here they were safely tucked up in a spot that was both freely accessible to view but far away from pathways so they'd not be disturbed.

This morning they moved from roughly where the cyan dot is south to the red dot.

Great scope views, sort of. One was higher up in a tree and just about in full view save for an errant branch. The other two were much more hidden pretty much down at the waterside. All are full adults as far as I could see, certainly two of them with long white head plumes. They were a touch too far away for my camera for anything but a record shot.

There has been a bit of an influx into the UK lately, and it seems likely that seeing these could well become more regular.

The only garden trap excitement since the Dotted Chestnut was this Mullein from last night, quite neatly on the same date that one turned up last year .....

One of the things that has kept me busy in the last few weeks was writing a bit of a VC55 Moth Review for 2022, which has been circulated locally and is now available on Naturespot:

https://www.naturespot.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-04/VC55%202022%20Moth%20Review_0.pdf

I'm hoping that with the review published, and as we head into May, there should be time to get out and about a bit more than I have done in the last year.

No time or inclination to link a themed track, so here's some anti-establishment ranting to a fairly sparse backing and a nicely relevant Cold War Steve video collaboration ....