Today's rainfall radar images (this one was from 1pm) were something to make the heart sink - or if you like seeing migrating/disorientated waders they were something to get excited by:
Ferrybridge was one of the few places that was birdable today and, as so often happens in these conditions, there was a constant turn over of birds. These Black & Bar-tailed Godwits, Sanderlings and a Whimbrel were there at dawn before it rained © Pete Saunders:
...but with nightfall, the continuing heavy rain and the tide rising enough to cover the sandflats all coinciding at the end of the day there was some fantastic late movement to tap into. Three Little Stints dropped in for a few minutes...
...but the most compelling sight was the constant departure of noisy flocks of waders rising up into the leaden sky and heading away south...
...it was getting so dark by the time two successive flocks of Knot zoomed through that but for their constant calling they were barely identifiable. Really, really exciting birding! © Martin Cade:
Today's wet weather did give us a chance to finish off a little project we were messing around with back in August. Bastard-toadflax Thesium humifusum is a rare-ish plant of good-quality calcareous grassland that grows here and there on the Slopes at the Bill; entomologists also know it as the only host-plant of two obviously equally rare-ish insects, the micro-moth Chalk Hill Ridge-back Epermenia insecurella and the Down Shieldbug Canthophorus impressus. Our particular interest has always been in the moth and as we hadn't seen that for a while we thought we'd try and get some in-situ photographs of it; this proved to be a lot more tricky than anticipated but did lead to the cobbling together of some video and stills that hopefully give a slight feel for what the plant and its bugs look like in the field. Many thanks to Erin Taylor, Mark Cutts, Martin King, Matt the Botanist and Jodie for various assistances - particularly for help with locating the plant in the first place which wasn't all that easy since most of it had already gone over for this year © Martin Cade:
