I've not posted for a while so I thought that I'd do an update though to be honest there is precious little to report. The Meadow "floods" are still as dry as a bone despite the recent rain and to be honest I think that it's going to take a serious bit of prolonged raining before we have anything like a decent pool again. The area is home to a nice post-breeding flock of about 50 Lapwings which often seem to like to shelter in various holes so that all you can see is this head sticking out. There are plenty of hirundines down by the boats including quite a few juveniles - nice to see that they've had a good breeding year. The juvenile Common Terns have still been knocking around for a while by the river and there are lots of geese taking advantage of the newly grown grass where the flood waters have been.
Juvenile Common Tern
It's been good for butterflies of late - my garden has had loads of Whites passing through. I even had a brief visit by a CLOUDED YELLOW over the weekend, a lovely rare migrant butterfly that appears in modest numbers in this country each year. The second brood of Holly Blues are now out in the garden with a couple fluttering about in our Holly Tree and the neighbours' Choisya. I've been keeping tally of the different butterfly species that I've had this year in the garden as part of the Garden Moth Challenge and I've managed an amazing tally of 15 different species in what is a rather modest urban garden. Speaking of moths, now that the heatwave has passed moth numbers are back down to more modest levels but I'm still managing to catch a few dozen each night. The most interesting catch recently has been a Metalampa Italica, a micro moth that until recently was confined (as it's name suggests) to Italy though in the last ten years or so it's started to appear in this country as well. Up until June this year none had been seen in the Upper Thames recording area though suddenly in July they started to appear, including one in my garden which apparently is only the third ever record for the area.
Metalampra Italica - just starting to colonise the area
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