Numbers of the commoner immigrant moths dropped away on a pretty breezy night, with singles of Convolvulus Hawk-moth and White-speck at the Grove the best of the oddities; a presumed Neglected Rustic was of note at the Obs.
Although a pretty raggedy specimen we think we're seeing enough on this moth trapped overnight at the Obs to be pretty sure it's a Neglected Rustic; if it is, it's only the second island record of this heathland species © Martin Cade
As promised, Nick Hopper has kindly sent us through a report on the second of his two nights sound recording earlier in the week - Monday night, 5th/6th September. If waders were the feature group on Sunday night then it was very much passerines that were to the fore on Monday. It was another very busy night with Tree Pipits dominating, but the highlight was 2
Ortolan Buntings: the first recorded at 22.45hrs just after Nick had heard one a few hundred metres away whilst out logging calls by ear, and the second at
01.40hrs. The recording below is the best of the two - the last call is easily
audible but the first call (at 1.5 seconds) is a little harder to hear. Tree Pipits were
calling almost continuously for large parts of the night; clearly many birds
were lingering in the air once drizzle had set in an hour or so after dark, but lulls in activity did
suggest that eventually birds were moving on. To give an idea of the
spectacle, at its peak over 1000 calls an hour were recorded! Robins were also prominent and peaked at around 100 calls an hour before tailing off
significantly after midnight. Other passerine callers were Spotted and
Pied Flycatcher and Yellow Wagtail. Among the non-passerines a
Common Scoter was a good record, whilst the usual suspects - including Bar-tailed Godwit, Knot and Turnstone - featured amongst the waders; in contrast to the night before no
Greenshank and just a single Green Sandpiper were logged. Interestingly, and as has been heard before during these nocturnal sessions, some
waders were breaking into song: mostly Dunlin but also a Common Sandpiper seemingly
attempting to sing.