NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Social media. Two little words that have become a way of life for millions. The opium of the masses. A vehicle that allows people to inflict their ordinariness on the rest of the world. Or to impose their superiority upon it. Useful information becomes lost and then drowned in a sea of rubbish. A world dominated by mediocre observations at best, by vacuous waffling in the middle and by poisonous ranting at worst. What has been unleashed is a stream of self-congratulatory drivel, fuelled by egos that demand to be seen, heard and responded to. We are no better than juggling clowns riding monocycles, hogging the spotlight and demanding applause, desperate for laughter and then hunting down comment in the aftermath. If our audience doesn't get it the first time then we will hit them over the head with it for a second, third and fourth time, beating them into submission until somebody - ANYBODY - responds. Doesn't matter that you've never met them and most probably never will,...

So, we have reached the last day of May. Not really the end of spring, neither the beginning of summer, maybe a mash-up of the two. But, for the purpose of this post, let's pretend that we have indeed finished with spring 2015. How was it for you? For me, in north Surrey, it was a stop-start affair. The weather was largely cool. Largely dry. A few pulses of migration were experienced, but it then stuttered. Nothing really unusual came along. It was all a bit benign, not terribly exciting, birding as if sedated. But I tried. I put in many hours, mostly on foot. It wasn't unenjoyable, but at times it seemed like hard work. Wheatears had a good passage - the highest counts being 8 at Priest Hill on April 13th and 7 at Mogador two days later. Three splendid Whinchats, two Common Redstarts and two Black Redstarts were welcome. Three Red Kites floated across the air space. A handful of Hobbys. But there were no bonus species - no Ring Ouzels, Groppers, Ospreys, Marsh Harriers... ...

May 29th? It is more like March 29th... wet, cold and windy here in northern Surrey. Not the sort of weather for butterflies. Speaking of which, this morning I purchased two Senetti plants from a local garden centre - they are pericallis hybrids that are early flowerers and seem to be a recent addition to the horticultural world. I hadn't come across it until I stayed at Dungeness Bird Observatory earlier in the month and saw the fine specimen that warden Dave Walker had obtained. It wasn't so much the vibrant flower colour that caught my attention as much as the pulling power that the flowers had on butterflies - it was positively crawling with them. Dave took the picture below that clearly illustrates the point: There are over 40 Small Coppers here! I just hope that Dave has continued to dead-head the plant and that new blooms are still coming forth. I'm back down at DBO next month and quite fancy a Swallowtail or Camberwell Beauty alighting upon it...

It is not all that long ago that the Toadflax Brocade was considered anything but a very local species. First recorded in the UK in 1939 and as breeding in 1952, colonisation then started in earnest. In the mid-1980s, Skinner considered it 'Well established at Dungeness, Kent and found locally along the coast eastwards to Sandwich and westwards towards Angmering, West Sussex'. Even in the 1998 revision of his book he mentions only 11 other records away from this heartland. Graham Collins 'Larger Moths of Surrey' - published in 1997 - can only lay claim to a single Surrey record, from Bookham Common on 7 July 1970. By the turn of this century moths had started to appear further west along the south coast, and since then they have been recorded as far north as Yorkshire. Of more interest than these isolated wanderers has been the colonisation of London and the Home Counties. Which leads me on to Banstead... It was in the back garden on 17 August 2009 that I came acro...

It's been some time coming, but at last there was an evening that felt muggy and an MV trap that had plenty buzzing around it. There may not have been hundreds of moths to inspect at dawn, but there was a fair haul including plenty of species new for the year. Here are a couple of the more visual of them: Argyresthia trifasciata - not recorded in the UK until 1982 but now spreading north and west and becoming well established. To be found happily in gardens where it mines the leaves and shoots of Cypress. The white head separates it from similar species. Toadflax Brocade - breeds in my garden on Purple Toadflax where the larvae are easily found in the late summer. Once a scarce species of sparse coastal habitats in the south and south-east - now regularly found in London and the Home Counties.

The Dungeness Bird Observatory moth trap was not exactly leaping last week, but compared to some of the totals that nearby recorders were obtaining, it wasn't really all that bad. In fact, this particular moth was notable indeed: DBO's fourth Ni Moth (above) was the star capture on the night of the 10th/11th and was a new species for me. There didn't seem to be much in the way of migrant lepidoptera around, save for a few Painted Ladies and Sean Clancy's monopoly on Bordered Straws! What was common were these: The variable and ubiquitous Light Feathered Rustic - I have recorded it twice in my Surrey garden, no doubt wanderers from the small populations that are present on the downs. The variation in colouring and marking is most obvious when you are confronted with a DBO trap full of them.

At Dungeness last Thursday the wind swung easterly and the rain set in. The local birders predicted a good bird and they were right - well, almost right, as none of them had actually predicted that there would be TWO good birds. The RSPB reserve was the chosen stop off point for these two White-winged Black Terns (above) and it was Martin Casemore (click here for proper images) who got the prize as their discoverer. As it turned out, none of us needed to run for them as they decided to stay put for two days, spending most of the time on Burrowes Pit with the odd foray onto Dengemarsh. I spent quite a few hours watching them as the chance to see summer-plumaged birds in the UK does not come along that frequently. One bird was a little mottled on the breast and underwing coverts but the other seemed to be 'fully formed'. If any species became a birding emblem for the week then it was the Hobby. During my eight day stay, up to half a dozen were seen (or suspected) to have...