5th July

A fresher feel to the air now that the wind's back in the west but few changes to report on the bird front. The land remained quiet, with a late Reed Warbler in song the best on offer at the Bill, and 42 Mediterranean Gulls and 2 Dunlin at Ferrybridge the only reports from elsewhere. A trickle of movement was still evident offshore, with 43 Common Scoter, 21 Manx Shearwaters, 7 Sandwich Terns and a Mediterranean Gulls through off the Bill.




Brown Elm Bell, White-barred Knot-horn and Twin-spot Honey - Portland Bill, 3rd and 4th July 2015 © Martin Cade
 
...mid-summer can at times be a rather overwhelming period at the Obs, what with the garden requiring almost constant attention, a desire to keep the nets open for as long as possible on the off-chance of the Upcher's Warbler and trying to squeeze in a few nights of petrel-luring; when this all coincides with such decent moth weather that the Obs traps are full to the brim and it's hard to resist nights out mothing elsewhere around the island then something has to give. Our current problem has been a burgeoning backlog of tubed micro-moths awaiting ID - when we finally got round to them this afternoon we found there were no less than 32 miscellaneous micros/tubes in the fridge! Amongst these there were several nice finds: Brown Elm Bell Epinotia abbreviana looks to be the first since the 19th century - Dale, Partridge and Richardson, the Victorian chroniclers of Portland lepidoptera, all recorded its presence but as far as we know there have been no records in the modern era; White-barred Knot-horn Elegia similella has been recorded just once before and on this occasion coincides with a series of records of presumed immigrant examples both in Weymouth and elsewhere; Twin-spot Honey Aphomia zelleri is the choicest find so far and seems to constitute not only the first record for Portland but only the third or fourth for Dorset. Hopefully there'll be one or two more morsels of quality still to come...

Finally, Nick Hopper was with us again last night trying for some more nocturnal sounds and although we haven't heard the results of that just yet, Nick has sent us through a recording of the Reed Warbler that dropped in overnight and was singing just a few feet from the microphone at dawn:



We're still of the opinion that these mid-summer singing Reed Warblers are 'spring' migrants as opposed to departing/wandering failed breeders. Those that we've trapped over the years that were already wearing rings have invariably turned out to have been first ringed as juveniles in the previous summer/autumn and, since Reed Warblers have been proved at times to be remarkably long lived for small passerines, we wonder if a proportion of youngsters don't breed in their second calendar year but maybe just make exploratory trips northward to get the lie of the land. This is likely just a fanciful notion but perhaps there are some Reed Warbler-ringers out there who could comment/put us right with the facts...