Purple Cloud

Dungeness - 0700hrs - misty, cool and cloudy, sw 3 - I tend to avoid Dungeness over a busy Bank Holiday weekend, but this morning it was back to being nice and quiet and people free. We wandered down to the Patch with a fret rolling in off the sea where the 1st summer Iceland Gull sat on the beach along with two Mediterranean Gulls and a host of Herrings. Mipit, Black Redstart and Pied Wagtail were all noted on the power station complex.
  Elsewhere on the land it was predictably quiet with just the usual Whitethroats, Linnets, Dunnocks and the like to sift through. However, a cracking little moth awaited in the Obs fridge: a Purple Cloud, trapped by Long Pits last night, a rare immigrant from the near Continent.
  Back home the garden MV contained 25 species of macros including White Spot, White-point and Fox Moth.

                                Purple Cloud, DBO

                               White-point

                                Fox Moth

                                Great Crested Grebe with chick


ARC - An afternoon visit to Hanson hide delivered a large flock of Swifts and hirundines feeding on emerging insects over the lake, plus Hobby, Marsh Harrier, Shelduck and Great Crested Grebe with young, Ringed Plover, 10 Lapwings and singing Cetti`s Warbler and Lesser Whitethroat.
  Also checked south lake at Lade where another mob of Swifts and hirundines were on the wing over the water, but could find nothing unusual in their midst.