Grapholita lobarzewskii

This moderately attractive micro was trapped overnight on the 18th June. It is very rare that I am entirely comfortable with micro ids', especially when the status says anything other than common, so it was kind of Colin Pratt to confirm my suspicions.
The same night produced another 2 new micros' for the garden, Gypsonoma dealbana and Agapeta hamana, along with a new macro in the shape of the female Ghost moth pictured below. A real red letter night!

Birding has, as is typical at this time of year, dropped off a bit. The best of a motley assortment being an adult Med gull in Normans bay on the evening of the 18th and a Red Kite drifting over the garden on the afternoon of the 22nd.

Hot Hawks

The last week has been a tad on the warm side however this has resulted in some new emergences on the moth front, notably overnight on the 16th when the 8 Elephant Hawks above were in the garden traps. On the same date a new micro for the garden was trapped in the shape of Aleimma loeflingiana pictured below.

The levels remain busy with breeding birds and the male Whinchat remains holding territory, record shot below, although his appears to be an unrequited love. Other levels specialities on varying days over the week included Hobby, Peregrine, and the saffron dazzliness of Yellow Wags.

Another positive of the heat has been the addition of a new fly and a new wasp species to the pan garden list. These are pictured below - the digger wasp Ectemnius ruficornis on the 17th and the wasp mimic fly Myathropa florea on the 18th.

Finally just a couple of pics - L-album Wainscot trapped in the garden overnight on the 16th and Kestrel at Rickney on the same date.

Elegance

"If you confuse this dinner dance, with elegance". So go the immortal words of the Prefab Sprout track of the same name and its been a pretty tense 18 hours or so from news of the Elegant Tern at Pags breaking and my connecting with it this morning in the company of Al Redman.

Its been a very busy week with my second BBS visit on the 4th producing an unusual highlight in the shape of a singing male Whinchat holding territory near Horse-eye Green (still present this weekend). One of those moments where you don't recognise a song immediately so have to start scanning! Other goodies on the BBS were Yellow Wagtails and Stonechat. The Hairy Dragonfly (pictured above) was seen on one of my transects as was the Drinker caterpillar (top picture) seen walking across the path at Horse-eye Green.

Midweek moth trapping produced the stunning Eyed Hawk moth pictured overnight on the 5th. Having got my dates skewed in my diary I had to do an early WEBS count on the 10th in the company of Richard and Hazel. This went pretty much as expected as things are quieter from a waterfowl perspective in the summer although the pair of Tufted Duck are still present and the Coots (pictured top) formed a family group of 6.

And so to today and the Elegant Tern which we connected with before it made its first sorty out of the harbour - good to have another real quality rare to get to grips with and to bump into Stuart Reed who I hadn't seen since the Devon Long-billed Murrelet! Also very useful since Stuart pointed us in the right direction for the nationally rare plant Childing Pink Petrorhagia nateulii (pictured below) which is only found at a couple of sites. Other birds at Pags included the Peregrines, Little Terns, and as many Med Gulls as you like, their mewing calls pretty much ever present. Al and I moved on to Ambersham Common where a reptile search was pretty poor only resulting in a single Common Lizard. The Six-spotted Tiger Beetles pictured above were seen on a few occasions and birds included singing Woodlark, Stonechat, Grey Wagtail, Willow Warbler, Tree Pipit, Yellowhammer, and Buzzard.
Our final stop of the day was Frensham Common for the 1st summer male Red-footed Falcon pictured above which gave excellent scope views as it hunted from dead tree branches rounding off an excellent day in good company.