Waldridge - 908 species - on the final straight

It's been a good month for the list and despite being away in Croatia for a while, I've gone past the 90% mark for my 1000 species in this Waldridge 1km square challenge

The moth trap has been most productive and even overnight last night gave me a few new for the year viz - 

Gortyna flavago (Frosted Orange)
Ypsolopha dentella  (Honeysuckle Moth)
Hydraecia micacea (Rosy Rustic)
Amphipyra tragopoginis (Mouse Moth)
Acleris emargana (a micro moth)
Mompha raschkiella (a micro moth) Honeysuckle Moth Dusky Thorn - there were 4 of this rather uncommon moth in the trap

 Having said that ,I am most pleased with the butterflies, having got everything I expected for in the square and after a fair bit of searching, I eventually added Purple Hairstreak to the 1ksq list having seen it juts outside the boundary earlier. I knew both this species and White-letter Hairstreak were lurking somewhere, but to get 22 species in my square is excellent.

Purple Hairstreak

 I'm also way past my expected bird list (by ten!) including a fly-over Yellow Wagtail yesterday which I thought I had dipped on as a bird in the spring did a U-turn meters away from the boundary. But not this one.
So it's the final straight and with me not back to work till next week and bit of effort I should not have to rely too much on bryophytes & fungi in the late autumn to get 1000 species.

This Garden Spider - Araneus diadematus in the garden is a particularly large specimen. The package all wrapped up is an unfortunate  Speckled Wood butterfly

	Actual	Expected
Birds	80	70
Vascular Plants	320	395
Mosses & Liverworts	41	50
Lichens	12	12
Fungi & Slime Moulds	13	20
Terrestrial Mammals	7	8
Butterflies	22	20
Moths	262	336
Dragonflies	9	9
Hoverflies	25	25
Other inverts	115	50
Amphibians & Reptiles	2	5
Aggregates & hybrids (not included)	21
TOTAL	908	1000

Early August update

It was quiet overnight in the moth trap, probably due to the weather, both in numbers and species with the first time in a while, no new species being seen that were new fort the year.

I haven't had much time to update the site as you can see but I have been getting onto the fell sometimes as fell as in the garden.
Amongst the more interesting of the moths since the last posting include Variegated Golden Tortrix, Svensson's Copper Underwing, Common Lutestring, Rosy Minor, Suspected, Rhyacionia pinicolana (a relative of the Pine Bud moth), Large Twin-spot Carpet and Olive. The latter two, were new for the garden and in fact the Olive was completely new for me.

Variegated Golden Tortrix

Rhyacionia pinicolana

Little Snipefly (Chrysopilus asiliformis)

Field Grasshopper

Common Green Grasshopper

Butterflies have been very showy and in decent to very good numbers. I have done the Big Butterfly count a couple of times at different spots, the other day I have 49 butterflies of 9 species in 15 minutes in the horse pasture above South Burn Woods. I had another good butterfly following on from the White-letter Hairstreak last month on the edge of Fell-edge Wood, in the way of it's cousin, the Purple Hairstreak. However I was a (very) little disappointed when I found out I count not add it to by list of species I have seen this year in the 1km square on the fell - NZ2549, as it was about 20, metres outside!

Ringlet

Meadow Brown

Small Skipper

Again I was nearly trampled on by a Roe Deer when I flushed one from some willow scrub in Wanister Bog. I was upwind from it some it must not have known I was there until I made a noise then for some reason ran towards me, turning away at the very last moment.
The birdlist is 76 for the year, better than I thought but I'll be lucky to add a couple more by the year's end.

My list for the square this year (1000for1ksq) is now 855, hopefully I can get to the planned 1000 with some effort.


The breakdown is

	Actual
Birds	76
Vascular Plants	305
Mosses & Liverworts	41
Lichens	12
Fungi & Slime Moulds	13
Terrestrial Mammals	7
Butterflies	20
Moths	239
Dragonflies	5
Hoverflies	24
Other inverts	111
Amphibians & Reptiles	2
Aggregates & hybrids (not included)	21
TOTAL	855