So..... into the next week..... up to our necks in it?!? Yeah right.... the winds turned again...... westerlies..... good for American stuff, but with the jet stream well and truly lumped over northern Scotland and the Northern Isles, it looked pretty unlikely we were going to be on the receiving end of another Dendroica warbler or Nearctic wader.... but you never know with nature..... especially migration.... things never turn up where you expect them to.
So to pass the time I popped over to Sennen to have another go with the Snow Bunting. This time the bird was easier to find, but a touch more wary. Instead of leaving the car I decided to use it as a hide and roll up to the bird with the engine off - hopefully it wouldn't be that bothered..... thankfully it worked quite nicely, not mega close, but close enough to get some decent portrait shots.
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| Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis) |
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| Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis) |
Whilst up at the top a pager message came on saying that the Dark Mottled Willow was being put on show at the local shop down at the bottom of the hill. A quick phonecall to Martin informed me that Steve Whitehouse was showing a few other decent migrant moths in the harbour car park next to where the Willow, so I started up the engine and made the quick 2 minute journey down past the seafront to where a few people were gathered and went to join in. There were a couple of Dark Sword Grass, a Vestal (personally one of my favourites), a few Rusty-dot Pearl and a Clancy's Rustic being shown off by Steve Whitehouse which were really great to see, but we were told about a moth that had turned up down at Porthgwarra whilst I was in Somerset... a Crimson Speckled... an absolute cracker of a moth that is one of the top species that I really wanted to see.... typical, I was just going to have to turn my moth trap on every night and hope that another one would show up, but with only just over 100 sightings of that species from 1900-2003, (a few more have turned up since then but still no more than 40 individuals), it seemed pretty unlikely.
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| Clancy's Rustic (Platyperigea kadenii) |
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| Rusty-dot Pearl (Udea ferrugalis) |
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| Vestal (Rhodometra sacraria) |
I spent a while looking through the different moths learning loads from Steve before I set off up the hill to have a wander down the valleys..... but before I got there I received a text from Kester telling me about a Tawny Pipit that had been found on the bulb fields at the end of the Nanjizal valley. I managed to get down there within half an hour, even having the time to find a Clouded Yellow butterfly perched up on a bit of grass on the stone walls along the track (there'd been a fantastic mini-explosion of them during the last couple of days.... I'd seen 14 the day before, but all fly-throughs).... after taking a few pictures of this stunning butterfly I went on to the fields. I managed to get a couple of brief flight views of the large pipit but just couldn't locate it on the floor which was a shame, but still good enough views to see the size in comparison to Meadow Pipits and heard its diagnostic sparrow like call which confirmed its identity but I just couldn't get close enough to get any photos.
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| Clouded Yellow (Colias croceus) |
I stayed until 4pm until it was time for me to leave and get to work at the hostel.... only getting one more very brief frustrating view of the Tawny Pipit. It was an early start the next morning to go ringing down at Nanjizal and with the winds still coming from the east, hopefully we'd find a few good migrants in the nets. The first couple of rounds were pretty quiet, a couple of Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers but on the third net round we ended up with a couple of goodies.... a new Cetti's Warbler and a cracking male Firecrest. Brilliant stuff.
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| Firecrest (Regulus ignicapillus) |
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| Firecrest (Regulus ignicapillus) |
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| Firecrest (Regulus ignicapillus) |
On the way back from ringing I had a text from John Swann telling me that a Convulvulous Hawk-moth had found its way into his trap overnight, so I made my way over to his house to have a look at this monster moth.
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| Convulvulous Hawk-moth (Agrius convolvuli) |
Another text, this time from Martin, he'd had another good couple of migrant moths overnight so it was off to his for a quick cuppa. When there he showed me L-album Wainscoat, Dark Sword-grass and a Ni moth..... the Ni had managed to make its way to our shores from southern Europe or North Africa.... an amazing journey for such a tiny animal.
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| Dark Sword-Grass (Agrotis ipsilon) |
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| L-album Wainscoat (Mythimna l-album) |
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| Ni Moth (Trichoplusia ni) |
After spending a while photographing the moths it was time to go and pick up Ross from the train station. He was going to spend a few days down here in Cornwall so hopefully we could find a few bits and pieces around the place.
The first couple of days were pretty quiet, but we did manage to get pretty close to a couple of Dotterel that had turned up on their way down to Africa at Polgigga.... we even managed to walk one into a spring trap to ring it!
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| Dotterel (Charadrius morinellus) |
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| Dotterel (Charadrius morinellus) |
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| Dotterel (Charadrius morinellus) |
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| Dotterel (Charadrius morinellus) |
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| Dotterel (Charadrius morinellus) |
With no new birds around we resorted to spending time with some that had been hanging around for a while..... the Pectoral Sandpiper at Marazion was next on the list, so we went down there to have a look..... we got down there and after scanning the far banks and not finding the bird we thought it was not going to be any good..... until Ross looked down on the shore next to our feet and there it was..... no more than 5 foot away. It was so close we ended up having to take photos with our macro lenses!
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| Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris melanotos) |
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| Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris melanotos) |
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| Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris melanotos) |
We left the little wader to feeding up for its migration and went back to the hostel..... we stuck on the moth trap and went to have a bite to eat. When we went out for our first check on the trap at first it was the same old moths, until Ross noticed on a piece of grass next to the trap...... a Crimson Speckled!!! An incredibly looking moth, that from the 1900's has only been recorded around 150 times in Britain!
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| Crimson Speckled (Utetheisa pulchella) |
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| Crimson Speckled (Utetheisa pulchella) |
The next day we went back to see the Dotterel again and while we were there we had another 5 fly over and a couple of Buff-breasted Sandpiper on the field with the original Dotterel.
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| Buff-breasted Sandpiper (Tryngites subruficollis) |
The afternoon we spent looking at the 3 Black Kites that had been hanging around near Drift, a really nice sunny afternoon, and we ended up having some cracking views.
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| Black Kite (Milvus migrans) |
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| Black Kite (Milvus migrans) |
Before it got dark we heard about a Wryneck showing well down on the Lizard... with this being one of Ross's target birds to see we set off. On arrival, we walked round the corner coming across a guy pointing his camera into the bushes...... sure enough, the Wryneck was there sitting proud on top of some blackthorn. It dropped down into the grass and was lost to view, but as we stalked across to try and find it again... one flew up..... then another!!! We wandered around to relocate them and finally managed to creep up behind on sitting in the gorse to get some decent shots!
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| Wryneck (Jynx torquilla) |
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| Wryneck (Jynx torquilla) |
Before I had to get Ross to the train station to get him back home we caught up with the Rose-coloured Starling in St. Just.... having it show off brilliantly well.
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| Rose-coloured Starling (Sturnus roseus) |
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| Rose-coloured Starling (Sturnus roseus) |
A brilliant week.... and I couldn't believe that my time was up... my contract at Ham Wall was starting..... but hopefully... if it was possible.... I'd be back in Cornwall, maybe even to pop on to the Scillies one last time for the autumn.
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