Wednesday 31st July 2019

On 7th July I went on a butterfly twitch! A Large Tortoiseshell had visited a garden near Paradis Quarry, Vale, on and off during the previous two days and once I heard that it had been seen again I thought it was well worth going for. I should say that the owner of the garden does have an interest in insects and was happy for me and Andy to appear there - it wasn’t just some random persons garden we piled into! It wasn’t there when we arrived so we waited around for a while, enjoying a nice Hummingbird Hawk-moth hovering around the flowers that the tortoiseshell was favouring. I wandered round for about half an hour or so and was thinking about returning home when suddenly it flew in and started feeding at the Red Valerian. To say it showed well was an understatement and we were able to snap hundreds of photos as it ‘nectared’ just a couple of yards away. This is a new species for me for Britain* and also for Guernsey, where I have now seen 26 species of butterfly, including other rarities such as Long-tailed Blue, Swallowtail and Brimstone. The next species may be a bit tricky but I predict Orange-tip, as a couple were seen earlier this spring and so it may just be colonising.

Large Tortoiseshell - near Paradis Quarry, Vale, 7 Jul 19

Large Tortoiseshell - near Paradis Quarry, Vale, 7 Jul 19

Large Tortoiseshell - near Paradis Quarry, Vale, 7 Jul 19

Large Tortoiseshell - near Paradis Quarry, Vale, 7 Jul 19

Large Tortoiseshell - near Paradis Quarry, Vale, 7 Jul 19

Large Tortoiseshell - near Paradis Quarry, Vale, 7 Jul 19

Large Tortoiseshell - near Paradis Quarry, Vale, 7 Jul 19

Not surprisingly July was quiet for birds but one species which this month is really good for is Crossbill. There had been a couple of flocks sighted the previous few days so I was on the look-out for some. On Friday 12th July I exited the school, cup of tea and sandwich box in hand, to take my place by the tennis courts for lunch duty, when a group of 10 finches flew noisily past me. With their front-heavy appearance and harsh calls they were clearly Crossbills and they only flew past at just above head height, just skipping over the top of the astroturf fence. A good one for the lunch duty list.

The next day I paid a visit to Pleinmont to take in the huge flock of Balearic Shearwaters that had built up and I was able to ‘scope them distantly from near the end car park. They were very far away - just left of the lighthouse in the pic below - but it was more the spectacle rather than the views that was amazing. After two summers of there not being any, these birds had come back in numbers. The last time they congregated we thought that about a thousand birds was incredible - this time I estimated about 3000. There may have been even more as other people had thought so. For a species with an estimated world population of just 19,000 birds, this is rather a large chunk of the species all in one place. Traditionally, Balearic Shearwater has spent the non-breeding season in the Bay of Biscay but, perhaps due to changes in temperature of the sea and so changes in the distribution of food, they are now mostly seen north of the Brittany peninsula in summer. Although some people thought that this was a mixed flock of Balearic and Manx, all the birds I saw were brown, albeit distantly brown. It would be nice to take a boat out next time to see them properly.

Watching the Balearic Shearwater flock at Pleinmont, 13 Jul 19

Other than the birds mentioned, I had a few mid-summer Med Gulls on the beaches, a couple of Firecrests in the valleys and I managed to bump into the pair of Cirl Buntings whilst on the school sponsored walk. The terrific news about the latter is that a young juvenile Cirl Bunting has been seen at Pleinmont so we have a new, and totally unexpected breeding species for the island.

The moth trap was out most weekends and especially in the very hot last week of the month. Despite the warm conditions, I didn’t get anything new for the garden in July but the best moths were my second ever garden Splendid Brocade and Sitochroa palealis on 23rd. A selection of the month’s photos are below.

Sminthurus viridis - Garenne, 6 Jul 19 - if globular springtails were the size of a small dog, I am sure they’d be kept as cute pets.

Cydnus aterrimus - Mont Herault, 13 Jul 19 - a non-British shieldbug which is apparently widespread along the cliffs

Broad-barred White on Buddleja - garden 26 Jul 19

The Old Mill, Rue des Quanteraine

Wild Carrot - Rue des Quanteraine, 25 Jul 19

Sand Goby or Common Goby - Port Soif, 23 Jul 19

Light Bulb Sea Squirts - Port Soif 23 Jul 19

Star Ascidian - Port Soif, 23 Jul 19

Grey Heron - Rocquaine, 22 Jul 19

Grey Heron - Rocquaine, 22 Jul 19

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On a separate note, I have recently passed a milestone, having now been doing my wildlife blog/diary for a whole decade! 10 years straight - quite a achievement. A couple of times I have had to catch up a few months at once, but there are not really any gaps in sightings. When I started out it was an old-style blog with more regular posts, sometimes every few days, and it included other things about everyday life and ‘amusing’ bon mots and ‘hilarious’ comments, not just wildlife. When I transferred to this new site in 2016, I mostly removed the non-wildlife stuff (mainly due to it being too cringey!). The old site is still there though https://lalarinho.webs.com/apps/blog/ . Nowadays “blogs” are not really fashionable as social media has taken over as the place to talk about what happens in everyday life and to display your witticisms. So that’s why I now think of it as my wildlife “diary”. It may seem self-indulgent to some people to post what I have seen online, but I look at it as a snapshot of a typical birders sightings at a particular place and time, and it may be of interest to someone in the future. I would always be writing up my sightings anyway so I may as well put it online. Anyway, below was my first ever post back in summer 2009 when I was a younger, handsomer man and Fan-tailed Warblers were breeding on my patch! It sounds like I had a very busy trap that weekend and was probably waiting for a stressful inspection week to finish before starting the blog. Onwards to another ten years!

Sunday 30th June 2019

June started with a dip. On the last evening of May somebody who lives at Le Bigard posted a recording on Facebook of a calling Nightjar and so a few of us went down the next evening and lurked in the gloom. It was a bit of a long shot as it wasn’t exactly good Nightjar habitat and so the bird was just likely to be passing through. We heard nothing.

Looking at the database it seems that I recorded zero bird sightings in June, a very poor show. However, I did get the moth trap out every weekend and the highlight was a new species for the garden and my second ever Bright Wave on 28th June. Quite a rare visitor to Guernsey although I have had one before, flushed in the daytime at Rousse, so it may breed here locally. Even if so, it is likely a recent colonist. That night was a good night in general and there were 57 Large Yellow Underwings which is very unusual for my garden. I also had 3 Dioryctria abietella (probably a migrant here) plus a few others I rarely get - Light Arches, 2 Mottled Beauty, Lathronympha strigana, Caloptilia elongella.

Bright Wave - garden, 28 Jun 19

I’d also had a new species for the garden on 1st, the tortrix Lobesia reliquana which I’ve seen before in the wooded valleys. Other notable moths were a Little Thorn on 1st and a Marbled White Spot on 14th.

Lobesia reliquana - garden, 1 Jun 19

The other interesting thing that I found was a plant growing by the road at Port Grat. I had driven past it a few times and couldn’t be sure what it was, so I stopped one day on the way home from work. I discovered it was a rather beautiful iris, of a species I didn’t recognise. It had pure white petals and a deep golden yellow centre to the lower lip. I liked the sound of “Fried Egg Iris”. It wasn’t in my flower book, but some research online revealed it to be Turkish Iris (Iris orientalis). Not a native species of course but it is growing in a wild area amongst other coastal grassland species. This doesn’t seem to have been recorded “in the wild” in Guernsey before and not very often in the UK either.

Turkish Iris - Port Grat, 14 Jun 19

Turkish Iris - Port Grat, 14 Jun 19

I didn’t really see much else different this month. June is often quiet for me as my hay fever restricts my time in the field. But here are a selection of photos from the month.

Pale Oak Beauty - garden, 1 Jun 19 - until recently a great rarity on Guernsey but now regular in the garden

Pine Hawk-moth - garden, 1 Jun 19 - with the larger moths the camera on the phone is good enough nowadays and much more convenient for a quick snap.

Lauritrioza alacris or ‘Bay Sucker’ - garden, 2 Jun 19 - I noticed interesting galls on one of the shrubs in the garden and looking closely found loads of these distinctive creatures seemingly dancing.

Procumbent Yellow Sorrel - garden, 1 Jun 19 - I’ve been selective about which ‘weeds’ I have been removing from the shingle, this species seems to like the conditions and grows well.

Knotted Hedge-parsley - 6 Jun 19 - this species isn’t uncommon on certain parts of the coast and has these tiny flowers up against the stem. It is an umbellifer but doesn’t look like one.

Scaeva pyrasti - Port Grat, 11 Jun 19 - hoverflies can be difficult to ID from photos, so for these species the proviso is that they may actually be a similar-looking species than the label says.

Blue-tailed Damselfly - Grand Pre, 22 Jun 19 - presumably a female of the violet form

Buff-tailed Bumblebee - Grand Pre, 22 Jun 19 - lapping up water with its tongue from a small pool in a leaf.

Eupeodes sp. - Grand Pre, 22 Jun 19

Helophilus sp. - Grand Pre, 22 Jun 19

possibly Chrysopilus cristatus (but maybe not) - Grand Pre, 22 Jun 19