I did the decent thing and on seeing the migrant moth weather forecasts I headed to the south coast rather than sit it out in the darkest depths of Bucks, so on Sunday night after a weekend of family stuff I headed over to Kojak's at Puddletown, stuck up a trap in his garden and then on Monday we headed over to Portland for first light, did some fridge twitching at the Obs and went through the egg trays there, ran our own MV trap at Portland last night (Western Street Quarry) and then a bit more fridge twitching this morning back at the Obs.
During the hours of daylight we were birding (although the warm Saharan sand winds were better for autumn moths than birds), highlights included a Red-breasted Flycatcher, three Ring Ouzels and a Pale-bellied Brent.
Moths migrants included rarities (and UK lifers) such as Sword Grass, Maize Moth, Spoladea recurvalis, Old World Webworm, Hellula undalis, Dark Mottled Willow, Golden Twin-spot and Porter's Rustics with supporting cast including Delicates (loads of these), Dark Sword Grass, Rush Veneer, Rusty-dot Pearl, Pearly Underwing (several), Gem, Silver-Y, Hummingbird Hawkmoth, Radford's Flame Shoulders, L-album Wainscot, White-points, Angle Shades, Box-tree moths and the Portland specialities including Flame Brocades, Beautiful Gothics, Feathered Ranunculus and Feathered Brindles. The Red Admiral migration was also pretty amazing with insects constantly moving through on Monday and there were also the odd Clouded Yellow around. All in pretty amazing lep migration.
Many thanks to Martin, Jodie and the Portland Obs team for a great couple of days.
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