I headed up to Chudleigh Knighton Heath on Thursday 23rd July due to reports of Brown Hairstreaks being on the wing and it was another hot, sunny and dry day. The train and bus journey there were uneventful and I arrived on site at around 10:45am when it was already feeling excessively hot. Everywhere looked excessively dry too with crunchy vegetation underfoot and dead and dying plants dotted about but there were flowers in bloom here and there.
I met up with Dave the Butterfly Guy but news of Brown Hairstreak activity was negative, a response echoed by 4 other butterflyers on site including Jenny from Plymouth. The heat continued to build over the course of my visit and I ended up declining a lift back to Plymouth from Dave as by 2:30pm I had had enough and returned home by bus and train which again were both surprisingly on time and uneventful.
I may have dipped on Brown Hairstreak but there were plenty of butterflies on the wing and I recorded 13 species - a male Brimstone, Common Blue, Gatekeeper, 2 Silver-washed Fritillary, Meadow Brown, 3 Small Copper, 3 Large Skipper, Red Admiral, Painted Lady, a Large White, a Speckled Wood, 4 Holly Blue and a Small White.
Non-butterfly sightings included an Emperor Dragonfly, a Black-tailed Skimmer, 2 Jersey Tiger Moth, a Ferruginous Bee-grabber and an Ectophasia crassipennis while avian interest was limited to a male Bullfinch, a Great Spotted Woodpecker, 2 Stonechats and numerous Swallows overhead.
I had the mothbox out in the backyard that night and the following morning I had a few interesting moths in the trap, the best being an Eastern Bordered Straw, a rare migrant moth from Europe. Before this year there had been very few records of this moth in Devon or indeed the UK but there has been an absolute avalanche of them this summer with most moth-ers seeming to find them in their traps except me. I've had Bordered Straw in the garden already this year and had a Scarce Bordered Straw back in 2022 so I've been keeping my fingers crossed to find an Eastern Bordered Straw and it's been worth the wait as it's a very attractively marked moth indeed. Bizarrely it wasnt in the trap but on an egg box resting on the outside of the trap, it also was on the top of the egg box and not hiding underneath it so I guess I have to thank the Herring Gulls for my 5am alarm call otherwise I might have missed it!
Also in the trap were a Pebble Hook-tip and a Canary-shouldered Thorn, both rare visitors to the garden, and also present were 2 Jersey Tiger, 2 Marbled Green, 7 Four-spotted Footman and 3 Mullein Wave. Other migrant moths in the trap were a Rush Veneer, 2 Rusty Dot Pearl and a Diamond-back Moth.
With a 04:47am Herring Gull wake up call on Saturday 25th July I decided to head out on the 7am bus to Wembury for a walk. It was overcast and feeling cool when I arrived off the bus but it soon cleared and warmed up and was again another hot and sunny day.
I decided to walk along the cliffpath towards Noss Mayo first, there were lots of Whitethroats flitting about along the way and I also found a very confiding Sedge Warbler which responded well to a bit of phishing.
There were 6 Moorhen at the farm ponds, 2 adults, 3 well grown chicks and a juvenile bird presumably from an earlier brood but they quickly disappeared into cover as usual. Butterflies were flitting about too and I had some nice views of Wall Browns amongst the Gatekeepers and Meadow Browns.
Offshore Gannets were moving west including a few very dark looking juvenile birds while at The Point a Redshank and 3 Dunlin were a surprise and Mediterranean Gull numbers continue to rise with at least 2 juvenile birds now present among them.
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