Easter 2011

Easter Sunday (24th April) and the weather was gorgeous! And we were both off work!

The night before I had the moth box out again and in the morning had a few nice moths including 2 flame shoulders and 2 knot grass. Before going to bed I checked the box and found a carpet type moth flitting around and I managed to catch it in a pot as I find the carpets very skittish and unlikely to stay in the trap overnight. Unfortunately on checking it in the morning when I got up I found it had expired during the night and it turned out to be a red twin spot carpet, a new moth for the garden.

A very tatty, very dead red twin spot carpet

We decided to have a walk along the coast at Wembury, knowing that the place would be bombed due to a combination of hot, sunny weather and the shops being closed for the day but it wasn' t too bad. Parking was difficult so we parked up in the village and walked down to the beach and enjoyed a pasty and a coffee sat on the bench just above the beach. Walking along the footpath towards Heybrook Bay the crowds thinned and it was a pleasent walk with plenty of orange tip and holly blue seen along the walk, it seems the weather is to their liking this year as I have never seen so many of them at Wembury before.

Bird wise it was quiet but whitethroats were very much in evidence, singing and songflighting away everywhere. No whimbrels were seen or heard but the tide was high and there was a lot of disturbance from walkers along the beach. Swallows were chittering away overhead and a cirl bunting was heard singing.

The toilet block held a brimstone moth, 3 Hebrew characters and a pug moth of some species. Also seen along the walk were 2 wall browns, the first for the year.

? Pug



Wall Brown

 The hot sunny weather has been good for my cactus, it was given to me over 30 years ago by my Great Uncle Les, and flowers every year, but I think this is the earliest it has flowered.

So that was Easter 2011, unusual in that I had some time off for a change and unsual in that the weather was amazing. I have a weeks leave next week (2nd May) and am hoping the weather stays good and I am hoping to see my first new bird of the year!