I set up my little weather station in the garden just after last Christmas and it just keeps giving me bad news. Since the 11th of this month it been telling me every time it rains (which it has every day this week), that its a new record for the total amount of rain in a month this year. It told me on Thursday it was the heavy hourly downpour of the year and on Wednesday the heaviest amount of rain in a day. It's now stopped raining so what does it tell me, the strongest winds of the year.
I put the moth trap out last night as it correctly predicted this was only a small chance of rain and it did stay dry. I suppose 48 moths of 19 species was acceptable and did include 4 species new for the year, but that's probably more to the fact I've been trapping far so little due to the weather, than anything else else. The four were -
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| Udea lutealis |
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| Flame Carpet |
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| Dusky Thorn |
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| Grey Chi |
together with
Square spot Rustic I forgot to add in, the yearly total for Waldridge is 238.
Unfortunately the rain, and now the wind, has put the chance of seeing anything interesting in the invertebrate or bird front as virtually zero. A few
Siskins flying over was the best of the birds but numbers of some species are increasing. There were over 250
Starling on the telegraph wires by Smith's Field the other day and a similar number of
Black-headed Gulls on the roof of Morrisons
. The latter group also had a few
Common and
Lesser Black-backed Gull as I always check them in case the Mediterranean Gull of a couple of winters ago may again make it's return. I have subsequently seen it at the Riverside Park and Great Lumley so fingers crossed it may end up back on the roof.
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