Black in Bexhill on a recurring theme

Following on from my last post a recurring theme began to occur whereby I would drive to Bexhill, fail to see a Black Stork, and then return home. This occurred on consecutive days until Wednesday (19th) when I decided to stake out Little Common recreation ground (the home of Little Common Ramblers CC for those who are interested in such things) where there had been intermittent reports of Bexhill Black in flight. So it came to pass that at 09.55 the aforementioned juvenile Black Stork appearred from the local gardens and gained height over the cricket pitch before drifting off towards Sidley. Clearly there is a lot of Heron fodder available in Little Commons multitude of sub-urban gardens with Grey Herons dropping in periodically along with the Stork, which is still present at the time of writing and periodically perching on fences, by ponds, and in the road for the fortunate few...

Out on the levels the autumn hirundine gatherings are taking place with birds preparing to head south. On the 21st I watched 3 Hobby hawking dragons over Horse-eye, consuming them on the wing, and a Kingfisher was watched along the drain at Hankham. The main reason for visiting Hankham was to look for Small Red-eyed Damselflies which was successful with at least two males seen. Other dragonflies included Ruddy and Common Darters, Emperor, and Brown and Migrant Hawkers.

Continuing the insect theme the Hornet Hoverfly, or more correctly, Volucella zonaria, pictured right was in the garden on the same afternoon.

Mothing continues to provide interesting immigrants with the Scarce Bordered Straw pictured left found on my Tomato plants on the 24th. Other immigrants and moths of interest over the past week as follow: Swallow Prominent (15th), Common Carpet (17th), Bordered Straw, Dark Sword-grass, Dingy Footman, Hoary Footman, Peacock, Sharp-angled Peacock, Yellow-barred Brindle, and Yellow tail (20th), Gold Spot, Orange Swift, and Satin Wave (21st). Peak night was the 20th with 88 macros' of 31 species and 28 micros' of 12 species. Over the same nights two new micros' for the garden turned up in the form of Acleris variegana (17th) and Acleris laterana (21st), other bits and pieces included Cydia splendana (pictured above right) (20th) and Cydia amplana (21st).

And so to return to my opening theme of cricket, hence the reference to Little Common Ramblers, Sunday saw myself and middle child taking the trek to the Oval for an urn lifting experience to follow on from Edgbaston day one. My eldest daughter has been fortunate indeed in that her first live experience of ashes cricket was day one at Edgbaston, oh Jimmy Jimmy, and that she has not had to experience the eighteen years of hurt that both myself and Mr Paul Chapman, noted lister and mother extraordinaire had to put up with prior to my last urn lifting experience on the final day of the 2005 series. Regrettably aforementioned PC's rain dance (pic left) failed to get England out of jail despite filling up Justin Langers ditch, reprise "are you standing in a ditch" c2005, however any day you get to see the urn lifted is a good one! The cricket pictured below is a Speckled Bush-cricket found in the garden on the 12th that I have just got round to identifying, a somewhat tenuous series of links I know, but one that I like, better anyway than the Gooch, lbw, bowled Alderman I had in my younger days!