Moths, Super Moon and Goldcrest

With a minimum temperature of -2.1 degrees centigrade and one night off a full moon, I didn't expect to catch any moths in the trap last night! But when I checked it this morning there were 3! A Dotted Border and two Quakers - I will do a full report later when I've attempted a few photographs and identified which Quaker species.

Tonight the full moon will apppear 14% bigger and 30% brighter than usual as it is in the perigee stage of its elliptical orbit meaning it will come ~50,000 kilometres closer to Earth than when it is on the apogee side of the orbit.

Below is a photo of the Super "Perigee Moon" that I took last night from the garden.




There seems to be a lot of blossom appearing locally - photo of robin I took yesterday in amongst apple blossom in a neighbour's garden.



I saw my first buff-tailed bumble bee of the year in the garden last week on the 17th.

Yesterday I spotted a small bird foraging in one of the silver birches - I thought at first it was a redpoll or even a siskin but once I got a view through the binoculars it was a goldcrest - my first sighting this year and also an addition to the year garden bird list which now stands at 23 species. In fact, it has returned this morning in exactly the same birch tree. Below a very, very poor record shot of the bird - if you click on it to enlarge you might just be able to make out the gold crest!!