Mark Lawlor's Nature Blog

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.

Smicromyrme rufipes (Small Velvet Ant) - male - L’Ancresse, 23 Jun 24

Smicromyrme rufipes (Small Velvet Ant) - female - Portinfer, 27 Jun 24

Emperor Moth larva - Les Osmonds, 14 Jul 24

Minstrel Bugs - near SSHS, 13 Jul 24 - this species has now well and truly spread throughout the island with these four just in the St. Sampsons school area just down the road from home. It is amazing how quickly insects can spread and become common.

Larvae of Fenella nigrita mining cinquefoil leaves - Port Soif Car Park, 4 Jun 24 - a small species of sawfly which appears to be new for Guernsey.

5th May was the bird race day but again it was not a hugely inspiring time to be out in the field. There were few migrants to be seen although we did dig out a couple of decent birds. The main thing I noticed about the day was the total lack of “lingering” species - all the early-leaving species had well-gone with not a hint of a Snipe, or Teal, or diver, or such like. We also learnt on the day that our organised boat to Herm for the auks would not be available which was a set-back and scuppered our plans and enthusiasm a little. So the day was a little bit of a damp squib for us and we got a really low total of 77 which was our worst ever. When you know you are on course for a poor total it is difficult to push yourself and we didn’t even record relatively easy species such as Bullfinch, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Common Sandpiper or Goldcrest which we always get.

The highlight of the day for me was a tired Turtle Dove which we just fluked into perched in a tree at Pleinmont. The first Turtle Dove I have seen in Guernsey for about a decade. We also had 3 Common Terns from Fort Doyle, a nice Blue-headed Wagtail, a Merlin belting over us at Rocquaine and a surprise Shoveler at the Reservoir.

Blue-headed Wagtail - Mont Herault, 5 May 24

With a change in personal circumstances it is unlikely that I will be able to get out for proper, long birding sessions any more, so I am going to have to rely on my regular “micro-birding” sessions to find new things. These involve maybe popping out for half an hour for a quick check of somewhere, or stopping for a short stroll on the way back from work, or scanning a couple of beaches from the car etc. However doing this regularly for most of the month was atrocious this May with hardly any waders or land migrants at all. I barely saw anything of note for three weeks.

So I was not expecting much on 21st May when I stopped at Pulias on the way back from work, with very sunny weather and unremarkable winds. I parked at the top car park and walked down the path across the base of the headland, towards the beach at the east side of Pecqueries. There were sparrows flying to and fro and, just as I was nearing the beach, I glanced to my right and saw a small, streaky bird just stood on the grassy path, barely 10m away. “That’s no sparrow” I thought before the bird immediately took flight, flashing its white outer tail feathers, and straight into the nearby Tamarisk.

So, it was clearly a bunting, but I didn’t even get the chance to put my bins on it, and it had now seemingly dissolved into the bush and was nowhere to be seen. Just from jizz, my initial identification was for a female-type Cirl Bunting, and I was pretty sure (unless it was something even rare). But can one really claim an ID of such a tricky species as Cirl Bunt just on naked-eye, one-second views? I really needed to find it again but another circuit of the area revealed nothing at all.

I ventured further, past the pond, to check the small fields east of there in case it had flown a bit more. But if it was in there it was not showing and I became resigned to losing it and having to let it go. I wandered back towards the car ready to go home and it was suddenly there, feeding nonchalantly on the short turf by the bottom car park, and was indeed a Cirl Bunting. Of course, nowadays, Cirl Bunting is not a huge surprise, with this bird fitting the bill. It was very streaky all over including the crown, with broad dark bars behind the eye and below the ear coverts, with a neat whitish spot at the rear of them. The bird showed the contrasting rufous scapulars and slightly rufous breast sides.

This was a patch tick, the sixth species of bunting I’ve seen on the patch, and the fifth at Pulias alone. There are no regular buntings in Guernsey, all species either being rare or at least scarce here. It fed for a short while before the inevitable joe public put it up. I saw it in the top of the Tamarisk again before it disappeared. Another birder saw it a short time later but then it moved on.

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Mark Lawlor's Nature Blog

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