Waxwing

Waxwing
"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."

From "Auguries of Innocence"

by William Blake

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Angle Shades

I really am beginning to wonder where all the moths have gone!

I put out the trap last Saturday night, the 9th June, to find just two moths in the trap on Sunday morning! The temperature dropped to a minimum of 4.9 degrees centigrade so I suppose I really shouldn't have been that surprised to trap so few again!.

One of the moths was a nicely marked Angle Shades (new for year) so that at least was a pleasant surprise - the other was a Light Brown Apple Moth

Angle Shades





On a more positive note we are getting lots of visits from recently fledged birds - house sparrows, goldfinches, robins, great tits and at least one young great spotted woodpecker. Its amusing watching their antics as they are fed by the adults. Yesterday and today I also saw one recently fledged blue tit perched on the feeding station being fed by an adult - I would like to think it is one of the youngsters from our nest box!

5 comments:

Rob said...

In the pattern of your Angle Shades I think I can see a hawk staring out.

Ragged Robin said...

That's brilliant Rob - when I next see a sparrowhawk I will remember the Angle Shades moth :)

ShySongbird said...

That is a moth I have seen in the past on blogs, rather attractive I think. It is worrying, we snatched a couple of hours out, early evening yesterday, as it had brightened up a little and ai was disappointed not to find even one butterfly :-(

Good to know you are seeing fledglings though. The atrocious weather cannot be beneficial to them either. I should think it is quite likely the Blue Tit you saw was one of yours :-)

Rohrerbot said...

Hello there!!:) I'm back again. I love my morning routines of reading blogs before I get my day going....but it was a productive and fun and FAST vacation!!! So I will be catching up with everyone over the next couple of days. I thought of you several times everytime I saw a moth fly by me. They love wet and cool morning which Wisconsin has a lot of!

Ragged Robin said...

Shy Songbird - I like Angle Shades - nice and distinctive and easy to id :).

The lack of butterflies is worrying. I popped to Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens for an hour this morning - it was actually warm and sunny:). But, although I saw some bees and a day flying moth, sadly there were no butterflies at all.

The young blue tit is still around - so hopefully its one of "ours" :).

Chris - Hi there :) Great to see you back. Glad to hear you had a good vacation - look forward to seeing some of your posts :)!!!
Glad you saw some moths!! I bet they were a lot more colourful than mine!!!