L.I.P....

... Little Invisible Plover!

After a top morning catching up with some of the family who are down for the weekend, I spent a few hours out on patch during the middle of the afternoon. With the clear skies and light breeze I opted for a spot of sky watching.

The highlight of a watch from Blackhole Marsh was a Little Ringed Plover which flew north calling non-stop at 15:30....it's a good job it was vocal, as I couldn't see the bugger!! I alerted Bun who was at Colyford Common, and he soon had it too...well his ears did anyway!

I was almost surprised I DIDN'T get a Red Kite, bearing in mind the numbers being reported at the moment!

On Blackhole Marsh, of note were: 34 Black-tailed Godwits, eight Redshank and five White Wagtails. Here's three of them...

...just!!

On Colyford Common, my third and fourth Wheatears of 2010 were nice to see. It's proving a VERY poor spring for this species - it's about bloody time this blog hosted a couple of Wheatear photos...

Both were males too :-)

It was another double figure haul in the moth trap last night, 18 moths of 5 species.

First for the garden were these two...

Clouded Drab; two different variations of

And this...

...which i'm pretty sure is a Red Chestnut??

The rest were: 12 Common Quaker, 2 Hebrew Character and 1 Early Grey.

Am working for most of tomorrow, will have to spend as much of my time as possible in the back yard me thinks!! It's about time I bagged another Co-op Osprey...