August 12th 2010

I was down the pond last night hoping to witness the Perseids Meteor shower but the forecasters were way off the mark with cloud cover so hopefully there might be a better chance tonight, while I was there a ran a moth trap and stayed too see what was around at first light.
The Ruff was still present on the inlet along with the Goosander and 2 Dunlin while the 2 Little Egrets were in toft bay along with 2 female Shoveler and Shelduck. Also in toft bay were 4 Common Sandpiper and a very persistent Sparrowhawk giving hell to some poor individual in toft shallows. Overnight the calls of owls could be heard eventually leading to sightings of Barn, Little and Tawny Owl, not surprisingly considering Tawny Owl is a hard to see species at the pond this is probably the first time since 1976 I have seen all three on the same night, Quail was also calling but much further right and from the back of the field than on Sunday.
Other sightings included 2 adult and juvenile Yellow-legged Gull, 4 Common Tern, 3 Green Woodpecker, Great-spotted Woodpecker, Whitethroat, Garden Warbler, juvenile Yellow Wagtail and 6 Bullfinch.
Back home the thunderstorms in the afternoon brought in Swift and a good passage of Lesser Black-backed Gulls over the garden.
Celebrated another year on this planet with the gang over at Cubbington and on the way home Dave and I parked up on Lawford Heath where we had excellent views of the night sky including the milky way and treated to a few meteors in the short time we gave it and I continued to watch a few more from the comfort of a deck chair in the back garden and a bottle of malt whiskey.

Richard