Birds, wildlife and travel
Karen thinks that the Yorkshire Paradise is a cocktail in a Harrogate restaurant, but for me it’s the Strid on a glorious May morning. The only disappointment was the lack of Wood Warblers.
A trip out in search of Turtle Doves was very successful with good views and lots of purring, albeit occasionally drowned out by Nightingales.
Wildlife photography is all about careful planning, spending a lot of time and technical expertise to take that brilliant picture.
However if the pursuit of excellence is too much, you can get a half decent picture first go by being dead jammy, as this Pipistrelle in the garden demonstrates
Karen had a nice surprise this morning, almost tripping over this magnificent Puss Moth as she walked to work.
Another moth trap yielded very few moths, but those that we had were interesting, including a Bloxworth Snout, a new moth for the house and a rarity for Sussex.
Getting up before five in the morning and still being chided for being late, followed by six or more hours of staring at the sea aren’t really the actions of a sane person.
For those of you who feel you have missed out, get up early tomorrow morning and look at these pictures over the course of a few hours.
The lambs are back in the field behind us. This one was very talkative. (Taken with my phone, so the quality’s even worse than normal.)
A moth trap last night yielded hardly anything: only eight macro moths in total.
Mind you two of them were new to the house list, Frosted Green and a very worn Oak-tree Pug, and a Mullein was the first moth we have seen, having had a larva a few years ago.
A morning at Selsey Bill and Pagham Harbour yielded a few birds, but nothing spectacular. One interesting bird was a Reed Warbler going through its repertoire of British bird songs. The clip below has Great Tit and Blackbird alarm call, but there were several other species being imitated as well.
Later on inland we had a walk in a bluebell wood and my first Orange Tips of the year
It’s not rare, even for home, but we’ve never had one running around the patio before. By the time I got to the camera it had escaped onto the lawn, before giving the pond a try out.
