Wild things have been fairly quite of late. Cold nights have meant that the moth trap has not had much of a show and afternoon jaunts around the village patch on the bike have been uneventful.
Under blue skies on Wednesday, I ventured from the dam at Alton Water down to Stutton Mill on the bike. The grassy slope of the dam only supported corvids, a couple of shelduck and an oystercatcher, but at least the view looking east towards Holbrook was pleasant.
The wood on the right of the picture supports a rookery and a scan of the more distant woods invariably produces a couple of thermalling Buzzards. I look forward to the day when the slope is littered with wheatears and whinchats jostle for space on the wire fence.
Getting from one side of the parish to the other only takes fifteen minutes by bike. The anticipation of a Curlew Sandpiper or Little Stint was soon expunged and I had to make do with scanning through a scraggy flock of 116 immature Common Gulls and taking poor shots of Dark-bellied Brent Geese.
This is the view from the western most point of Stutton. The railings in the foreground are a favoured Kingfisher perch in the winter.
I got my hopes up last night as the conditions looked ideal for moth-trapping. I set the MV in a local private garden that normally comes up trumps, but the haul was abject. Just 22 moths of eight species as follows:
Nut-tree Tussock - 3
Hebrew Character - 2
Common Quaker - 10
Early Thorn - 2
Early Grey - 2
Frosted Green - 1
Double-striped Pug - 1
Belted Beauty - 1
Frosted Green
