21st December

A shocker of a day with wind and rain throughout. Two Short-eared Owls and singles of Grey Heron, Chiffchaff and Goldcrest were still at Southwell, a Yellowhammer pitched up at Blacknor and 2 Kingfishers and a Great Northern Diver were at Portland Castle/Harbour.


Lesser Cockroach - Pennsylvania Castle, 20th December 2015 © Martin Cade

...this female Lesser Cockroach was scuttling about on the sheet when we packed up moth-trapping at Pennsylvania Castle at dawn yesterday. It struck us as late in the year for a cockroach to be about and the conventional literature doesn't mention adults recorded after October - have later dates become the norm or was this exceptional?
 
Also yesterday, what with all the moth excitement we quite forgot the third-winter Yellow-legged Gull that on one of our visits there was amongst the gulls below Culverwell:
 


 
...this bird struck us as being a fair bit darker than usual, to the extent that we wondered if it might be of more distant, Atlantic, origin (or might it even be some sort of wacky Herring x Lesser Black-back hybrid?).