NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

The 14-day Uberpatch birding bonanza has started, although my use of the word 'bonanza' is definitely overkill and there are moments when the appearance of the word 'birding' is highly questionable. It's been that sort of start... DAY 1 September 1st. Calm, overcast, rain during middle of day. Warm. Local chalk downland was the order of the day, although I found myself walking much further than I intended, more in the desire to actually find some migrants rather than for the purposes of exercise. I clocked up 22.1km in the search - it really was a day of casting my eye across superb looking habitat and wondering why on earth there were no birds (mostly passerines) to look at. It was dire. Even though I was out in the field all day I only managed to find 28 warblers (which included a single Garden Warbler and two Lesser Whitethroats) and no chats. Hirundines were also hard to come by, with a couple of 20+ Swallow flocks hawking above horse paddocks. I visited Little...

First up is the smart looking tortrix moth Agapeta zoegana . It is relatively common, the larvae feeding on knapweed, and is met with annually in the garden MV. However, it comes in two forms. The one usually encountered is a real looker, a concoction of banana-yellow and milk chocolate. The other, known as ferrugana replaces the yellow with a frothy cappuccino brown (above, right). I hadn't knowingly seen this form until last week, both handily coming to the MV on the morning of August 9th. 'The Smaller Moths of Surrey', published in 2012, suggests that ferrugana "occurs occasionally in the county at a low density." My checking of the MV during this hot weather has not really produced the hoped for 'good' migrant or wanderer, but this disappointment was suspended on the morning of August 5th when this bizarre moth was trapped - a gynandromorph Gypsy Moth, half female, half male. The male half in the above images is exhibited on the left hand side of the...