Coal Tit

I finally managed to get a picture of a Coal Tit in the garden. One or two are ocassionally seen, usually announcing their presence with loud stridant calls but were difficult to photograph as they move off quickly through the tree canopies.

I'm keen to eventually get a picture of every species that visits the garden and some are harder than others e.g. the only Goldfinches I see are flyovers and so still have evaded my camera.

Picture to follow.

Recent New Moths

Copper Underwing

Pebble Hook-tip

Angle Shades

Wasps
Here some pics of some recent new moths caught and a picture of the problem I can have with wasps.

Moth Trap Attracts Fox

"Timmy" Fox

Amazing - at the weekend the cats alerted us to something large moving around the moth trap. We went upstairs and carefully looked out the window to see a young fox pouncing on moths around the trap. Not to be out done, in the morning we found our cats doing much the same thing. One of them was even sitting on the perspex lid to dab at the moths inside. What with the wasps, foxes and cats treating it as a feeding station it's a wonder there's anything left to indentify.

Sproghawk

On the way home last night I saw a flock of 50 or so Starlings wheeling over the houses - what attracted me to them was the fact that they had formed such a tight dense flock. Scanning round I saw a Sparrowhawk soaring close by and it was obvious that the Starlings had tightened up their flock in the presence of the hawk a bit like the cowboys grouping the coaches tighter together when the indians appeared on the horizon.

Great spotted in the Garden

A Great Spotted Woodpecker was heard and then seen in flight in the garden (only the 2nd record this year). Meanwhile dragonflies (possibly Migrant Hawkers) hunt over the lawn and around the trees and a Meadow Brown was also seen to compliment the daily Large Whites, Small Whites and occasional Holly Blue.

The pond is now ready for the liner and ... er some water - so this weekend should see the great fill taking place. It's roughly 7 metres by 5 and only 60cms at the deepest point but should attract some interest from the local wildlife. The last pond we had was only a quarter the size and recorded up to 15 toads, 20+ frogs and 10+ newts at one point.

More Moths

Tree-lichen Beauty

Maiden's Blush

I managed to run the moth trap over the last 4 days and have still been getting vast quantities of yellow underwings (60+ of the 3 yellow underwing species - Large, Lesser and Lesser Broad-bordered). The highlight, following on, from the White Point the other day was a poor specimen Tree-lichen Beauty, which is listed as an immigrant. Other highlights included a Maiden's Blush - another new moth for me.

I've since learnt from learned colleagues from the Kent Moth Group that both Tree-lichen Beauty and White Point are resident in Kent in suitable habitat but not known in Tunbridge Wells, so my records were more of local population movements rather than immigrants from the Continent. Just shows that some moth distributions are frequently changing and literature can soon go out of date.

White Point - New Moth

White Point

Moth catch was limited last night as it was fairly cool. However 8 species were caught with the highlight being a White Point which was a new moth for me and is listed as a suspected imigrant.
Bird highlights in the morning consisted of 2 Chiffchaffs, one of which managed a snatch of song.
3 Holly Blues and Large White butterflies were noted and we had two sightings of foxes.