Saturday 14 August 2021

Dorset Soiree Part 2

As usual our holiday plans were knackered, this time due to both the vehicles we were using breaking down. We had to cancel our trip to Abbotsbury Swannery on Thursday because Kojak's car sounded like we were dragging a body under the vehicle so we had to sort that out and yesterday our campervan started flashing warning lights and the brake lights didn't work and we ended up waiting five hours for the RAC to get us back on the road again (the RAC bloke was having a breakdown of his own due to the volume of grockles like us breaking down while his colleagues were isolating due to the pingdemic- Corfe Castle was shut becuase no staff too) . So unfortunately we missed visiting the Birds of Poole Harbour's Osprey translocation project (Mark Constantine couldn't make it too as he was self isolating so it was all tit spannered). Gutting but we also saw campervans broken down on busy roads and roundabouts causing miles of tail backs and recently saw an upturned car blocking the A35 so guess we were lucky comparatively speaking. Did manage to do a recee of Portland Island (might do some autumn trips with Kojak there if I end up stuck in UK again- Bulgaria have banned Brits entering at the moment so autumn trip looking knackered too) and did a bit of mothing in Kojak's garden. 

Kojak, Jacob and I doing Portland Harbour- loads of Meds 
Kojak's vertical garden- pretty interesting set up with a nice covering of vines, ivy-leaved toadflax and ferns including Himalayan Honeysuckle, Russian Vine, Virginia Creeper, Hart-tongue Ferns, Male Fern (according to PlantNet), Herb Robert, Buddleia and Tentwort. So plenty of nectaring potential for insects. We had 25 species of moth with the actinic heath trap including Silver-Y and a few autumn moths which were NFYs for me including Copper Underwing, Yellow-barred Brindle (below), Flounced Rustic and Square-spot Rustic

View of Portland Island from Hardy's Monument 
Portland Bill Obs 
Puss Moth caterpillar in the Obs 
Med Gull in Portland Harbour 
Jaffa , Jacob and I on the White-legged Damselfly twitch. More from Kojak HERE and HERE . Thanks Kojak and Jaffa for looking after us! 

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