Steady week

It's been a steady few days mostly confined to the Lodge. The weekend heat wave gave way to a south westerly airflow by Monday but there was another brief warm interlude yesterday. As usual most of the regional moth immigration occurred in the south west but there's been a bit of pebble dashing round here. 

Our new phermone lures had instant success with Lunar Hornet Clearwing now on the garden list. Been a few other interesting moths and migrants. Had a Hummingbird Hawkmoth in the conservatory on Monday. Now on 533 for the garden and 357 for the year. 

Lots of young birds in the garden. Most recent Ebird list HERE. There's been a few Sand Martins flying around with the Barn Swallows and Swifts are more regular too reflecting a regional movement of Sand Martins and Swifts that is occurring mainly off east coast by sounds of it. There were 200+ Sand Martins over Breach Pool last night so obviously on the move round here too.

Got a lot of work done in the garden this week. Matt was here yesterday and we started painting the fascia on the house. Got some scaffolding going up today or tomorrow. Slowly ticking off all the summer jobs. Holly's caravan is going well and got regular bookings now and the guests are enjoying the 'petting zoo' - Oatmeal our 'Guard Goose' is growing well.

All good on the mini-farm, harvested more onions and potatoes this week, sowed some carrot seeds and potted on the water melons, planted Nicotiana in the pots after the potatoes, propogated more tomato and strawberry plants from our existing plants. 

Work in London is same old, mainly looking at private maintenance jobs,

Have chipped away at the Dutch Birding paper too. So overall catching up with everything. 

So after a couple of weeks concentrating round here I'm hoping to get back out in the field for some birding tomorrow. 

Lunar Hornet Clearwing- lifer. Well pleased. 

Long-winged Pearl- lifer. 

Looks like a Langmaid's Yellow Underwing

Blackneck

Small Mottled Willow has been the migrant of the moment with up to four last night. As mentioned previously there's not a lot of the more expected migrants- just the odd Silver Y, odd Delicate, small numbers of Diamond-backs and Rush Veneer and no Dark Sword Grass. Also a Dark Spectacle last night. 

Nemapogon koenigi attracted to the Lunar Hornet Clearwing lure

Ethmia dodacea

Been quite a few of these 'sobers' in last couple of days. I've collected a few so hopefully Mike will have a look at them. Currently got about 50 moths with Mike awaiting dissection so will be interesting to get the results from that. 

This Large Marsh Horse Fly was a new one for the garden on the 'all other species list' which is now on 159 HERE. 

Happy with our onions

Vid of Lunar Hornet Clearwing