Mark Lawlor's Nature Blog

The second half of August was pretty good birding overall despite no garnish of a rare. Just 20 minutes at Pulias on 16th and I had Sedge Warbler, Redstart and Greenshank, and the next day saw 2 Green Sandpipers at Claire Mare and a Pied Flycatcher at Fort Hommet - a selection not to be sniffed at and an indication that autumn had properly arrived. An education this summer has been improving my understanding of juvenile gulls and a few stops at Perelle beach have revealed a few Yellow-legged Gulls, mainly via the tutelage of Wayne. There’s many subtle differences for identification, but the main thing is that if it looks fresh and neat in August, it’ll be a Herring/LBBG, but if its faded/worn/moulty then it’ll be more than likely Yellow-legged.

second Yellow-legged Gull - Perelle, 18 Aug 20

On 24th August I managed a few hours out and a big surprise was a Green Sandpiper flushed from the shore on the west side of Port Grat, only the second bird I have seen on the patch I think. There was also a Kingfisher there, my first of the year. At high tide I went to look at the Sandwich Tern roost on Houmet Paradis island because Mark had seen about 150 birds there the day before, a record count for Guernsey and a sight worth seeing. When I got there it was indeed rather impressive but I thought that perhaps there were even more. I gave it a couple of counts and soon worked out that there were actually at least 355 terns present! This number was really incredible considering that prior to 2020 there has never been even a 3-figure flock seen before. Just why there has been so many this year is a mystery. Perhaps there is some specific disturbance elsewhere in the Channel where they usually congregate.

Sandwich Terns - Houmet Paradis, 24 Aug 20

Ringed Plover - opposite Houmet Paradis, 24 Aug 20

Ringed Plovers & a Dunlin - opposite Houmet Paradis, 24 Aug 20

Suddenly, on 29th August the winds finally swung round to the north and some seawatching was required. Unfortunately on the first morning I was unable to attend the session due to childcare requirements and I missed some fabulous skua passage. Undaunted, I managed to dash out for a bit in the afternoon, managing two hours on the rocks by myself between 2 and 4, and had a whale of a time. I saw 7 Bonxies and 16 Arctic Skuas including a fine flock of six birds. I may have even had a skua sweep but I couldn’t be 100% - one of the distant birds looked almost certainly a Pom and I am pretty sure I had a Long-tailed Skua just outside the reef. I’d just seen a few Arctics pass and this one looked smaller and lighter in flight and the plumage looked good - very pale below, a palish brown above and an almost white head. Perhaps with a few people beside me, I may have nailed it.

The conditions looked similar the next day and so I went out to Jaonneuse for a morning session. The skuas had slowed down but we still had 21 Bonxies, 5 Arctics and a Pomarine. There wasn’t much else passing but there was my first passage Kittiwakes and Common Scoter of the autumn.

31st August was the final day of the school holidays and I went up to Pleinmont. There were a few migrants about including single Swift, Whinchat and Yellow Wagtail. It was a bright and sunny day and Mark and I had a kettle of raptors suddenly appear in the sky above us. They were difficult to study due to their height and position but we picked out a clear Honey Buzzard in amongst the 20+ Common Buzzards.

Willow Warbler - Claire Mare, 17 Aug 20 - popped into Claire Mare whilst Chris was having a quick ringing session. Nice to get some birds in the hand, it has been a while.

young Collared Doves in nest - garden, 18 Aug 20 - it is amazing how quickly baby birds grow. On the previous post, the photo of the fluffy babies was only 10 days before the above. The birds left the nest about 2 days after this.

In the moth trap, despite the good time of year, I didn’t really get any notable species. Two species which do seem to have increased this year are the pair of invasive micros, Opogona omoscopa and Tachystola acroxantha, both recent additions to the local insect life. On 18th August I had eight of each species in the moth trap. There was pretty stiff southerly winds on the few days up to and including 20th August which I thought may have brought some interesting butterflies to Pleinmont so I went for a wander. There was none (which matched the lack of migrant moths) but I did spot a wasp feeding on the flower of a clifftop Fennel which I thought looked a bit odd. A close look revealed it to be a Tree Wasp, which has only a couple of records for Guernsey - not what I was searching for but a cracking new species nonetheless.

Tree Wasp - Pleinmont, 20 Aug 20 - note the tiny black dot on the face, the general hairiness and the general impression that it is plotting something.

Curculio glandium (Acorn Weevil) - garden, to MV, 18 Aug 20 - another corking new species for me and not really any recent records for Guernsey, although I am sure it is probably resident in small numbers sticking its beak into our local acorns.

calling Fulmar - Pelagic trip, 15 Aug 20

15th August was the day of the annual Societe pelagic trip out into the Channel. Even though they are annual, for various reasons, I have rarely gone in the past but I am determined to go out on as many as possible from now on. When I went in 2017 I was really spoilt and I forced myself to temper my expectations for this year’s trip. As, by nature, these trips are unpredictable, they are always exciting as something could appear from nowhere.

We headed north out of the Russell and headed quickly NW towards the Hurd Deep. It is difficult to scan and spot anything when rushing out so quickly and the boat is moving so much, but we saw a couple of Manx Shearwaters cross the bow and a couple of Storm Petrels skip past. We didn’t have great views of Stormies this year as we didn’t have much chum to sling out and most sightings were of quick fly-bys.

We eventually reached the Hurd Deep and we headed for the vicinity of a French trawler, shouting bonjour across the water to them. There were lots of Gannets, Fulmars and gulls around and we cut the engines and threw some bits and bats of food off the side to get the birds close to the boat. We soon saw our first Bonxie appear and it was a very small and pale bird, seemingly with very worn plumage and it hid amongst the gulls well. It gave very close views around the boat.

The gulls that were around were an interesting mix. Lots of Lesser Black-backeds, some Great Black-backeds and very few Herrings. We picked out quite a few juvenile Yellow-legged Gulls close to the boast, picked out mainly by their worn plumage, pale head and chunky bill.

Juvenile Yellow-legged Gull - Pelagic trip, 15 Aug 20

One of these birds seemed to stand out even more than the rest and we mused whether it might be a Caspian Gull. It had a small head and slender proportions, and a tertial pattern that seemed spot on for that species. It was always easy to pick out due to an unusually pale tip to the bill. We took lots of photos of the bird and studied the photos at home. I couldn’t really see any features that totally ruled out a Caspian Gull, although even on the pictures below the greater coverts look rather chequered. Much more expert people on the internet considered the bird and thought it was much more likely to be a small, pale Yellow-legged Gull and we were happy to go along with that conclusion. Further research on the internet led us to the read about the NW Iberian race of Yellow-legged Gull (lusitanius) which is a smaller race than the birds elsewhere in Europe and - well-spotted by Wayne - a great many photos of first-year lusitanius show a pale tip to the bill. Perhaps this is a genetic trait of this race? We’ll never know of course but it was an interesting observation.

After bobbing around the trawlers for a while we slowly travelled south-west, eventually passing round the Hanois lighthouse, following the south coast before heading home. We saw about 15 Storm Petrels altogether and a similar number of Balearic Shearwaters which were more common close in off the south coast. There were 3 Bonxies in total and we had a few groups of terns pass by which were mostly Common Terns, although we did have two sightings of Black Tern: 2 adults passing NW of Guernsey, and 2 juveniles not too far off the Hanois. We did not see any cetaceans although a very distant jumping thing may have been a dolphin or a large tuna. One species which was quite common was Ocean Sunfish and we saw them regularly, totalling about 20 perhaps. These were just the ones close to the boat so there must have been thousands out there. So although we did not see any rarities, it is always a thrill to get out into the sea in a small boast and the Fulmars were just terrific, calling and swimming so close to the boat.

“Nothing to see here…. Just us gulls…. Minding our own business…. Tum-ti-tum…. “

The light looking over the north side of the Little Russel

Autumn migration is now slowly picking up and my bins have now migrated from inside my field bag to round my neck. A couple of trips to Pulias have resulted in returning Reed Warbler, Whimbrel, Wheatear and Redshank on the headland. On my ‘insect’ walk circuit from Moulin Huet to Le Vallon and back on 3rd August, I had excellent views of a Great Spotted Woodpecker in the wooded valley south of Le Vallon - perhaps a range expansion, and perhaps they bred nearby this year. Also two different Firecrests, showing how much they have become common. The biggest surprise was the discovery of a pair of Collared Doves nesting in the grapevine right above the path in the back garden. Shows what an observant birder I am that it was only when the chicks got to the size they are below that I actually noticed the nest, despite it being about 6 inch above my head every day.

Collared Dove chicks in the nest - garden, 6 Aug 20

The first half of August was great for the moth trap with warm weather bringing in the species. The 11th August was the busiest night with a minimum of 104 species attracted to the garden, the highlight being the amazing Pyrausta purpuralis, a new species for me, and one I have been expecting to find for ages. Other good records for that night were 3 Coleophora salicorniae (a saltmarsh micro), my first Bucculatrix albedinella for 13 years, and 3 of the migrant micro Cydia amplana.

Bucculatrix albedinella - garden, 11 Aug 20

Other excellent moth-trapping records included my second Jersey Mocha on 5th, just ten days after my first, Palpita vitrealis on 9th and 15th, and a Oncocera semirubella on 13th. Another new species of moth for me was a Phyllonorycter mespilella which emerged from a tiny mine in a Pear leaf collected at St Sampsons HS conservation area in July. Its nice to photograph such tiny moths when they are freshly emerged and bright.

Phyllonorycter mespilella - emerged from a mine in a Pear leaf collected at St Sampsons HS in July - a new species for me

On 7th August the Societe entomologists took some traps to the reedbed reserve at Grand Pre to try and catch some specialist species. As well as netting and using sheets in the evening, we went down the next morning to see what was in the traps. We had plenty of wainscots inculding Brown-veined, Twin-spotted, Webb’s and Fen, plus lots of Limnaecia phragmitella and Calamatropha paludella. I do get some of these reedbed species in my moth trap at home on occasion, I suppose due to living relatively close to the Track Marais. Other good species included a Splendid Brocade and my first Guernsey Chevron. In the half-light I netted a couple of Cochylidia rupicola, a tortrix rarely recorded before. We would definitely find more species of moth by doing more in-the-field mothing but with all the equipment required, it is somewhat a palaver! I collected up a few bits and bats from the sheets and found a few new species for me, including the bracken-feeding sawfly Aneugmenus temporalis, the mud-beetle Heterocerus fenestratus and an iris leaf-mining fly Cerodontha iraeos, which all look to be new for Guernsey according to the spreadsheets.

One of the traps in the Grand Pre reedbed, 7 Aug 20

On 3rd August it was a lovely day and decided to do a new walk, Moulin Huet to Le Vallon and back through the green lanes. The bare banks of the paths were productive with two new spider hunting wasps - the hulking Aporus unicolor and Evagetes siculus, a Channel Islands speciality - plus a male and female Dark Blood Bee (Sphecodes niger) which I cannot see on the Guernsey list. The most intriguing critter was a bug that was quite common on a patch of Enchanter’s Nightshade by the road near the bottom of Moulin Huet. Looking it up it was clearly a species of Dicyphus but these bugs can usually be identified by the foodplant, and none of them are listed as being on Enchanter’s Nightshade. It also had a couple of unusual physical features, especially the double-banded first segment to the antennae. I the end I got in touch with a couple of experts and they thought that it could be D. tamaninii or D. bolivar. This genus is apparently confusing because they can have recently been used by gardeners/farmers for biological control to get rid of pests. Anyway, it was interesting enough for a couple of specimens to be currently winging their way to Holland to be DNA analysed by an expert entomologist.

From the path above Moulin Huet, 3 Aug 20

Enchanter’s Nightshade - Moulin Huet, 3 Aug 20

Comma larva - Le Vallon, 3 Aug 20 - I always find this species on elm rather than nettle

Just A Bird

Just A Bird

Mark Lawlor's Nature Blog

Just A Bird

August 2020 part ii

August 2020 part i

Just A Bird