Monday, 17 October 2022

The Old Vic

A steady few days at the Old Vic Homestead. A little bit of vis mig over the weekend with Redpoll, Siskin, a few Redwings, Linnets, Chaffinches, Mipits and Skylark over and a fly over Peregrine and 3 Cormorant taking the garden year list to 81. Still the odd Chiff about and the tit flock this morning was huge with 22 Long-tailed, 25 Blue and 12 Great Tit (plus 3-4 Coal Tits around too).  4 Magpie on Saturday was noteable- only had one occasionally all year. 

Things have picked up with the moths, now on 482 for the year (still a hope we can get to 500). New for years and other highlights in images below. Been getting up to 60 moths of 15 or so species. 

We had a bit of a disaster in the mini-zoo with two of our Long-tailed Lizards drowning or dying and then falling into the water in the Paludarium so we took our surviving lizard back to Exotics at Heart  and now got a single Panther Chameleon. We 'drown proofed' the tank by putting expanding willow between the arboreal section and the water, so far so good. Also added some more species to the Office aquarium and gave a Red Tropical Crab it's own tank after it started eating it's communities members (reminded me of Hackbridge!).

Not much happening on the mini-farm, the Pumpkins are doing well and we will harvest them next week for Halloween. Still no eggs from the chickens. 

Went to Farmoor Res today. Very quiet, finally got a Rock Pipit. EBird list here  

Magpie- one of four in a nano-influx 
Raven 
Figure of Eight- a new for year, only had a couple of these in the past 
Feathered Thorn- right on cue. NFY
Red-lined Quaker- another October classic 
Brindled Green (above) and Yellow-line Quaker (below)- more October specialities. NFYs

Grey Shoulder Knot- another new for year. 
A good run of Merveille du Jours recently 
I was anticipating migrants last night so put two traps out under cover (the MV under the garden furniture umbrella and the Actinic in the open barn). Had 4 Rush Veneers, this one was resting in this position pretending to be something a bit more interesting 
I presume this is a Beaded Chestnut variant
November moth agg- it is getting towards that time of year and we haven't got long to get another 18 species for the year to make it to 500. It could be quite a struggle to get there. 

Not sure what this is, presumably something worn. It’s a well marked Deep Brown Dart (thanks Upper Thames Moth blog ) 

Our new Panther Chameleon - wait for it in the video 

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