1st July

Despite a briskish offshore breeze it was the sea that came up with today's numbers at the Bill, with 58 Common Scoter, c50 Manx Shearwaters, 17 Balearic Shearwaters and a Mediterranean Gull through and, quite surprisingly given the rather benign conditions, at least 4 Storm Petrels lingering off East Cliffs. Swifts were about overhead but looked to moving rather randomly, whilst singles of Willow Warbler at the Bill and Reed Warbler at Southwell were both new. The Southwell Common Rosefinch was quite well searched for today but evidently only showed once briefly.

Overnight mothing was unexpectedly productive, with yet another new species for the island - a Light Crimson Underwing at the Grove - the highlight; elsewhere, a Splendid Brocade was trapped at Cheyne Weare, whilst the Obs totals were 86 Silver Y, 18 Diamond-back Moth, 9 Dark Sword Grass, 4 Rusty-dot Pearl, 3 Cream-bordered Green Pea, 2 each of Bird-cherry Ermine, Rush Veneer, Langmaid's Yellow Underwing and Dark Spectacle, and singles of Warted Knot-horn C. repandana, Latticed Heath, Small Mottled Willow and Scarce Bordered Straw.

We haven't yet been able to photograph either of the night's decent moths other than with them within or in the mouth of specimen tubes - although that actually does the crimson underwing a favour since it's missing a big chunk of its left wing! © Martin Cade/Stephen Plummer:




When we initiated the 'new' Blogspot website it had always been our intention to leave the old PBO website uploaded as a resource for reference but currently it's offline due to a problem with the server; the old site had several little features on Langmaid's Yellow Underwings dating from the days when they were first being identified in the UK so we thought we'd retake some of the reference photos using today's two specimens, both of which looked to be pretty decent examples © Martin Cade: