Become a birdwatcher for £15.49

I am still not getting out much and have become stir crazy or perhaps I should say Starling crazy as a result. This self imposed incarceration is down to my attempts to catch all the adult Starlings that visit the garden. Recapturing some of the birds that were ringed in previous years has proved to be quite difficult and some individuals have taken many hours to catch. Each bird is caught individually in a manually operated cage trap and I have to watch all the birds that go in the trap to feed to see if they are birds I need to catch for the study. Birds I have already colour-ringed happily come back to feed in the trap and I may have to watch dozens come and go, several times in some cases, before I see one that I need to catch. I have now caught 128 different adults and this probably represents about 95% of the Starlings that breed within feeding range of the garden. With a week of the study period to go I may be able to push that percentage even higher.

The first juvenile Starling followed its parents into the garden a couple of days ago and the numbers have grown since then. I have only ringed 9 of the juveniles so far as I am still concentrating on the adults but I expect to ring up to 200 juvs over the next month or so.

So what do I do while waiting for Starlings to enter a trap; well the answer is all manner of useful and not so useful things that don't take me too far from the window. Today I found myself thumbing through a product brochure that had been posted through the door. To my amusement I found becoming a birdwatcher only costs £15.49.

Another advert that caught my eye was for toast tongs. Apparently they have a little magnetic bit for handy storage and I am sure we all know a place that we would like to stick such an item.

The advert that gave me the biggest smile was for coal paint, yes coal paint as in paint for coal. If your imitation nutty slack is not black enough then this is the product for you. I would love to meet the person who has dull and faded coals that are in need of a lick of coal paint. I bet they have toast tongs stored in a very handy location and also became a birdwatcher for £15.49.

Back to more usual blog content and I haven't mentioned moths recently and that is because the moth trap has hardly caught a thing for a while now. It has been one of the worst springs for moths that I can remember and this must be having a knock on effect on some species of birds as there will be fewer caterpillars around as a result. There were only 3 moths in the trap this morning which was really poor given the date. There were 2 Poplar Hawk Moths and a Bright-line Brown-eye, both species being firsts for the year.

Poplar Hawk Moths 24/05/15

Bitten by the bug.

One of the down sides of ringing at this time of year is having to get up earlier and earlier to beat the sunrise and the other is the emergence of biting insects. We were out the other morning in flat calm conditions which were perfect for mist-netting but we must have attracted every biting insect for hundreds of meters around. The ringing was a bit slower than expected so I spent some of the time in between net rounds trying to get some photos of mosquitoes filling up with blood.

Yours truly photographing a mosquito.

This mosquito has only just started feeding.

This one is engorged with blood and about to fly off.

I am lucky in that I rarely get a really bad reaction to insect bites although it should be said that I do try and avoid getting bitten most of the time. The very small black flies usually cause me to be covered in little red circular blotches that make me look like I have been dotted with a red felt tip pen but that is usually as much of a reaction as I get. They are a real nuisance when there are a lot of them and can make your skin crawl but they don't cause much pain or swelling, just the telltale red dots.

Small biting black-fly of sorts.

I did have some insect repellent impregnated wipes with me and I used some those on my face and neck but as the dog was suffering more than me I used most of them to try and give him some relief from the gathered swarm. I wiped his fur and tied all the used wipes to his collar but his legs and belly still became a mosquito filling station.

The latest doggy fashion, a mosquito repellent wipe adorned collar.

A fairly thick fur coat was no protection.

Now I know I said I don't normally get a bad reaction to insect bites but allowing my hand to be used like a pin cushion for photographic purposes did have its consequences. The following day the back of my hand swelled up and became quite itchy but it only lasted 24 hours or so. I think it was one of the larger black-flies that I reacted to and not the mosquitoes, I couldn't brush the black-flies off while waiting for my mosquitoes to fill up.

No I am not showing off my finger nails, just the swelling on the back of my left hand (right as viewed).

While on the subject of insects there has not been much new in the moth trap recently, in fact it has seemed quite slow despite the reasonable weather. A Lunar Marbled Brown on the 24th was a welcome improvement in variety. Yesterday the trap produced the first Lime Hawk Moth of the spring and it was quickly followed by a Poplar Hawk Moth this morning. Variety should steadily pick up from here but the frost forecast for this weekend may temporarily hold things up.

Lunar Marbled Brown (Drymonia ruficornis) from the night of 24/04/14

Poplar Hawk-moth (Laothoe populi), fresh from the trap this morning.

The other bug I have been bitten with is all things Grasshopper Warbler. Below is a collage of head shots of birds caught in the past few days. As you can see there is quite a bit of variation in the bill colour in these birds. As for the pale olive grey bird from my last post we are no further forward yet.

Grasshopper Warbler head shots showing the variation in bill colour.

2nd is 1st and today is 3rd

My internet has been playing up for a little while now so I may not get to post this post. The the morning of 2nd of June saw my first reasonable catch in the garden moth trap for months. Numbers are still very low for the time of year. The catch is from the night of the 1st in moth recording terms and they were recorded on the 2nd and this posting is on the 3rd just if you were wondering about the post title.

There were 14 species of macro moths and a few micros in the trap but less than 30 moths in total. Highlight was a Silver Y which is the first migrant moth of the year for me and hopefully a sign of better things to come.

Silver Y (Autographa gamma)

Common Marbled Carpets should be just that, common, but only one was caught. Hawk moths are always nice to catch and these two Poplar Hawks were only the 3rd an 4th of the season.



Common Marbled Carpet (Chloroclysta truncata)



male Poplar Hawk-moth (Laothoe populi), note the broad orange leading edge to the antennae.

male Poplar Hawk-moth (Laothoe populi)



female Poplar Hawk-moth (Laothoe populi) with fine white antennae.