June 24th 2008

Took the advantage of a very humid night to do some "lamping" in the valley and managed 10 species of moth. It does what it says on the tin? - you just use a very bright lamp and search for moths in a suitable location, catch them by net to identify before releasing, a very simple method of finding out whats about. By the time the battery went down dawn was breaking and managed 4 Barn Owls and 2 Little Owls. Moved on to another Barn Owl location and had three so pretty chuffed with the effort then went on to Napton Reservoir where relaxing over a brew managed to see Cetties, Reed, and Sedge Warbler plus Whitethroat and Chiffchaff.
Needed to be back home by dinner time so doubled back via Stockton Cutting and here the butterfly's were out and saw Green-viened White, Ringlet, Meadow Brown my first Marbled White of the year and over 400+ Bee Orchids. While going down the Flecknoe Rd the Red Kite flew over in the distance heading towards Shuckborough.
After lunch I saw at long last (7th visit) a Forester Moth at Ashlawn Cutting plus a few day flying moths and more butterflys including Large Skipper, Brown Argus (another first for the year)and Small Copper.
Next stop was Draycote Water but did not see much though chatting with Bob and Francoise they had between them managed Common Tern 3 and a Common Sandpiper in dunn's bay. Unfortunley the sun disapperaed so a feeble search with Bob in country park produced only few Meadow Browns and one Ringlet but did managed one of the Common Terns on the way out.
Back home and my own moth trap was heaving ending up with 22 species of 73 moths.

Richard