June/July 2024 — Just A Bird

This month marks 15 years since the start of this nature diary/blog. Back in June 2009 I was posting sometimes a few times a week about what I was seeing, a bit different to the monthly summaries that I tend to do nowadays. Was I just seeing more than I do now or am I just being more efficient? I don’t really think there is a great difference (although it’s true my birding sessions are not as regular as they were in those days). I had been moth catching for quite a while but I was just starting out on other wildlife groups so there were lots of “new” things to see and write about. Guernsey has a literal limit to where can be visited, and so nowadays I tend to see many things that I have seen before and so are less likely to get talked about in a post. One of the reasons for starting the blog in the first place was that I had got better camera equipment so I had much more pictures to put on, although these were still just digi-scoping pics in the main. On the first week of the blog I was talking about the breeding Fan-tailed Warblers at port Soif and hearing the male singing every day through the car window as I drove to work. I presumed that by 2024, the species would have colonised and be commonly nesting all over Guernsey. It’s never happened since!

Early Summer 2024 was a busy time but not really bird-wise. The most unusual sighting was two Brent Geese resting on Vazon Beach on 15th July. I have never seen any in summer here and I think there must be only a couple of mid-summer records at all for Guernsey. These birds should have been in the high Arctic at this time of year.

There weren’t many great nights for moth-trapping that coincided with weekends, the early summer being not particularly warm this year. I had a few species that I’d only caught once or twice before such as Coleophora mayrella and Pandemis cerasana. The night of 19th July was particularly good for micros and I caught a new species for Guernsey - Mompha propinquella (White-headed Mompha). It was really fresh and very distinctive with its white head and back tufts. I also had a quick check of the Coleophora scabrida colony on L’Ancresse and it was still going strong with lots of tiny cases on the Rupturewort.

The most interesting non-lepidopteran I found in June was the Small Velvet Ant (Smicromyrme rufipes), something that I have never seen or heard of before. Velvet Ants are not actually ants but a type of wasp and the big species are famous for having the most painful sting of any insect. However, there are only two species in the UK and this species is the really tiny, just a few mm long, and is unlikely to sting. I caught a male first, one of a few that were flying around a sandy path at L’Ancresse. Very hairy with a red thorax and silver bands on the abdomen. A few days later I saw a female scuttling around on the sand by Portinfer car park. The females lack wings, hence why they are called “ants”, which they do look quite like.

Just A Bird

Just A Bird

Mark Lawlor's Nature Blog

Just A Bird

Just A Bird