The idiot on the fell

The moth trap has been out on a couple of occasions and last night was the best so far this year with 20 moths of 7 species including 3 Early Grey (with a 4th being found in the garden later), and 2 new species for the year, Clouded Drab (at last) and Early Thorn.  The session a couple of nights earlier  produced Early Tooth-striped and the micro-moth Diurnea fagella.

Early Tooth-striped

Early Grey

Saturday was the better day and I got my first butterfly of the year, a Small Tortoiseshell. There must have been a huge arrival of migrants Friday night as there were 7 singing Willow Warbler and a Blackcap on the Fell on Saturday morning where there were none the day before. 2 pair of Lesser Redpoll  and several pair of Linnet are back on territory and  singing and it looks like many of the Siskins are hanging on to breed too. A couple of birds flying over 'the square' were also new - Sparrowhawk (another 'at last')  and Oystercatcher

Lesser Redpoll feeding on Willow catkins

Still plodding on with my 'square-bashing' and my 1km square NZ2549  species list for the year is now on 287.
Additions over the last few day as well as many already mentioned above include -
 Two more mosses - Plagiomnium undulatum (Hart's-tongue Thyme-moss) and Dicranoweisia cirrata (Common Pincushion Moss), Smooth Sowthistle, Broad-leaved Pondweed, Wood Burdock  and  European Larch. I also found another species of worm Lumbricus rubellus (Red-head Earthworm) in the garden as well as the blind centipede Cryptops hortensis  and Water-slater (a sort of aquatic woodlouse) in the garden pond. I spent a couple of hours looking for bees on fell on Saturday and it resulted in me finding Early Bumblebee and 2 mining bees - Andrena cineraria (Grey Mining Bee) and Andrena clarkella together with the cuckoo-bee Nomada leucophthalma and quite a few Bombylius major (Common Bee-fly). Another mining bee Andrena haemorrhoa (Early Mining Bee) was in the garden later in the day. The final species was Amaurobius fenestralis (a Lace-webbed Spider) on the windowsill.

Nomada leucophthalma

Andrena clarkella 

Bee-fly in the garden on cultivated Oxlip

 So if anyone saw some idiot on his hands and knees with his nose 2 inches from the ground on sandy bits of the paths on the fell on Saturday and had to walk around him, guess what, that idiot was me.