Mostly Moths

Lade - warm, dry, hazy sunshine, E2 - It was a quiet weekend bird wise around the peninsula punctuated by murky weather conditions whenever a sea fret rolled in setting off the Dungeness foghorn, while on Saturday a spectacular lightening show lit up the night sky.

                               Lade Desert is full of colour at the moment

I continued on with this seasons breeding bird survey across the local patch, but spent more time searching for insects and looking at plants, particularly around the ponds where a number of dragonflies were on the wing, including Hairy Hawker and Four-spotted Chaser.

                                Four-spotted Chaser, Lade ponds

Meanwhile the garden moth trap showed a marked improvement in line with the warmer nights with eight NFY and a small non-descript noctuid that turned out to be not only new for the trap site but also an infrequent visiting migrant, a Concolorous. I almost overlooked it, thinking it might be a Small Wainscot, but that flies much later in the summer. So thanks to Dorothy B and Sean C for confirming the identification.

                                Concolorous, new for the trap site

                                Eyed Hawkmoth

                                Sharp-angle Peacock, new for the year

Dungeness - A circuit of the point this morning produced a Stonechat feeding recently fledged juveniles, a singing Black Redstart on the power station and a pair of Wheatears by the lifeboat station, plus all the usual singing Mipits, Whitethroats and Skylarks.
  A couple of visits to Burrowes over the weekend turned up the expected Arctic waders on the islands such as Turnstone, Sanderling, Dunlin, Knot and Grey Plover, plus four Little Gulls, a Garganey, a pair of Wigeon and Hobby. Over the road on ARC the Bitterns continue to show well from Screen hide.