Rainy days and 1000 species in the garden

It has continued to be cold with a northerly airflow over the last couple of days and today it was wet too. Definitely the kind of conditions to be getting office and lab work done. That said there have been a couple of surprise Subalpine Warblers on the south coast in the cold conditions which just proves that the time of year trumps the weather for those who persevere. 

However I did not persevere and retreated inside to get on top of various things including getting the 20 year Corvo review to final draft stage, uploading the moth dissection data, refurbished the Paludarium and was in London yesterday doing quotes and getting paperwork done today too.

The biggest news was from the dissection results from Mike Bailey with a Goosefoot Groundling, Scrobipalpa atriplicella, only the 9th record for Sussex and a few I had missed/misdientified including Crocidosema plebjana, Elachaista albifrontella, Bryotropha affinis and Wormwood Pug. The other dissections were confirmations of my in field identifications. Now on 124 for the year. 

We have some lovely guests staying with us the moment, a naturalist family who are making the most of their stay despite the bad weather. We went on a bug hunting walk down the lane the last couple of nights and found a Slow Worm yesterday- the first for the lane/garden. Now on 219 for the pan-species garden list HERE which is everything not a bird or moth or butterfly (which are recorded seperately). With the 644 moths, 19 butterflies, 116 birds and the mammals we are on exactly 1000 species for the garden! 

The only noteworthy bird sighting was about 50 Swift flying around Chichester Gravel Pits this evening. The other guys have had some bits and bobs including a few migrants in-off this morning. Also sounds like Manx Shearwaters are being displaced into the Solent. 

The cold condiitons continue for the forseable so I probably won't get out in the field until Friday and use this time to get up to date with the project work. 

Goosefoot Groundling (above) and its twigs and berries (below). The 9th record for Sussex HERE

Slow Worm

The Paludarium refurbishment before (above looking like a right mess), during (middle) and after (below)

Good as new! Not as impressive as we've had it the past HERE when we had a mini-zoo of 100 different species of animal. Nowadays the mini-zoo is smaller but the airbnb guests children (and our boys) love the mini-zoo so really need to be building back after we had to decommission a lot during the move here. More rain day work in the future.