August 21st 2011

A cracking day started with a smidgen of rain while having coffee watching the grassy field down the Southam road where Dave had a possible Merlin dash through.
Our walk out to farborough spit, Draycote Water with Colin produced a Hobby over the country park car park followed by a Sparrowhawk that flushed a female Ruff off farborough bank near the fishing pontoon while the spit held Greenshank, 2 Dunlin, 9 adult and 2 juvenile Ringed Plover and 2 Common Sandpiper. Adult Yellow-legged Gull was on the now named “daisy” island with 20 Swift low over Thurlaston village, 5 Yellow Wagtail on farborough bank, Common Tern flew past and the perimeter hedge held 4 Whitethroat and a Lesser Whitethroat.
Once finished chatting with Bumbling Bears it was breakfast at the Long Itch Diner then on to Napton on the Hill where we were lucky enough in a 15 minutes spell to see Sparrowhawk, Hobby, Peregrine, 4 Raven and 4 Buzzard over the windmill. The Spotted Flycatchers took some finding but eventually located 2 flocks with a total of 15 seen (3rd visit in a row none in churchyard). The highlight today was our third Redstart of the year and a very rare sighting for the hill of a Reed Warbler. They are occasionally seen near the canal or in the bottom of the quarry mainly in spring and of course good numbers breed at nearby Napton Reservoir but I only have 2 other records of Reed Warbler for the hill it self in 35 years. Plenty of other birds around and we finished with 2 Whitethroat, 2 Nuthatch, 2 Treecreeper, Green Woodpecker, 3 Blackcap, 6 Willow Warbler, 4 Chiffchaff and 4 Goldcrest.
Moved on to the Just So where the Bridge Nursery gardens held a number of insects and we managed 4 Common Blue, Gatekeeper, Green-veined White, Blue-tailed Damselfly Common Darter and Brown Hawker.
Napton Reservoir was our final stop though on the birding front we could only find Common Sandpiper, Shoveler and Bullfinch but the damsel and dragonflies made up for it with Common Blue, Azure, Red-eyed, Blue-tailed and Large Red Damselfly while also present were Southern, Migrant and Brown Hawkers plus 2 Small Copper and a few Common Blue butterflies also present.

So far August has been disappointing on the mothing front with to many cool nights this month so took the opportunity to play catch up with our garden lists this afternoon. Scores on the doors to the end of July has Dave on 548 with 73 new species so far this year and little old me light years behind on 505 with 40 new. One of the Dark Arches trapped on the 27th July became my 100000th moth trapped in Warwickshire and my county list is on 677

The space station passes at 21:49 so hoping for clear skies. Richard