NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Mothing away from the back garden was limited to my Dungeness excursions and one splendid day spent on the Wiltshire chalk downs. As much as 'lifers' are not the be-all-and-end-all of recording, they are undoubtably welcome, and all featured here (bar the Death's-head) were exactly that. Death's-head Hawk-moth - Dungeness, Kent, May. Found resting on the wall of a beach dwelling Purple Cloud - Dungeness, Kent, May. Trapped by Bob Arnfield at the Long Pits. Cistus Forester - Pewsey Downs, Wiltshire, June. Quite a few on the wing Red-headed Chestnut, Dungeness, Kent, October. In the same MV as a Cosmopolitan. Spoladea recurvalis, Littlestone, Kent, October. A rather smart migrant pyralid. Sword-grass, New Romney, Kent, October. The first Kent record since the 1960s

Another beautiful Dungeness sunrise Spoladea recurvalis - this rare pyralid came to a Greatstone MV on October 26th Last moth out of the observatory moth trap on October 26th was this Red-headed Chestnut The rarest of the lot, a Sword-grass, the first area record since the early 1960s (October 27th) We started with the sun rising, so let's finish with it setting

6,000 Starlings in a flock is small beer when watching certain roosts. Yes, they may sweep and wheel, coalesce and break apart, seemingly playing around as much as choosing exactly where to roost and share in the day's news via their chortling - but a flock of 6,000 Starlings coming in off the sea is a different proposition all together. They are direct. They have urgency. They are arrows. They have dispensed with grace to act upon a primal urge to move on, move forward, survive. We picked them up maybe a mile offshore, a shifting smoke, shape-shifting until we could start to appreciate what we had before us. A leading mass that seemingly sped up as they closed in on us, then revealed a tail of birds that went on and on. They breached the beach and gained height, the tail of the flock panicked into catching up. More followed, and within half-an-hour we had counted 15,000 birds - early morning in France, breakfast in Blighty. The Starlings took the feathered plaudits but moths s...