3rd July

With a lot more cloud in the sky birding was considerably easier today but there looked to be very little about, with 60 more Swifts through over the Bill, 20 Manx Shearwaters, 19 Common Scoter, 8 Black-headed Gulls and 3 Mediterranean Gulls through or lingering off the Bill, 3 Sand Martins through over Ferrybridge and 13 Dunlin settled there.

A Purple-bordered Gold at Reap Lane - a new moth for the island - was the highlight of the night's moth-trapping; the immigrant tally at the Obs consisted of 46 Diamond-back Moth, 19 Silver Y, 2 each of Dark Sword Grass and Cream-bordered Green Pea, and singles of Bird-cherry Ermine, Cock's-head Bell, Bulrush Cosmet, Hummingbird Hawkmoth, Delicate and Green Silver-lines.

In as much as heathland insects are pretty well-represented amongst the ever-growing list of strays making it out to Portland, Purple-bordered Gold might well have made it on to a list of possible future additions even though it does appear to be only a thinly distributed inhabitant of the south-east Dorset heaths - the recent spell of hot weather and freshening northeasterly winds certainly offered up what looked to be ideal conditions for dispersal away from that area © Martin Cade:


And with rain setting in whilst we're compiling this update we've got an opportunity for a bit of catching up so it's back to Sunday 1st for some nice photographs of the Little Ringed Plover at Ferrybridge and one of the Southwell Peregrines © Pete Saunders: