30 Days Wild:Days 8 & 9 - Swallows & yes, More Moths ;)

                                                     

   A double day blog for these two days, linked by setting up the Moth trap on Day 8 and emptying it on Day 9. I will get back to the Moth trap in a bit, but first earlier in Day 8 I had a 15 minute bug hunt around the garden.
  A few Bees were out and about.

  Also found one of the larger weevils, the Vine Weevil, considered a garden pest but love the markings.

  Flies are not my favourite species but I love the colour of this Greenbottle Fly.

  Found this couple of 14 Spot Ladybirds doing their best to increase the Invertebrate population of our garden, not sure why the Ant was watching though lol :)

  I tried hard to find some Arachnids but this was the only Garden Spider I could find, the usual Zebra Jumping Spiders that frequent the house wall were nowhere to be seen.

  Okay so back to the Moth trap, I got my Skinner trap set up around 9.30pm, went indoors and rechecked it about 11pm.There were already plenty of Light Brown Apple Moths about and also the first Small Magpies of the year.

  Another moth that seem to turn up in good numbers early on were the Heart & Darts, 12 in total.

  The only other arrival before bedtime was the first Sandy Carpet of the year too.

  An early 5.00am start to empty the trap on Day 9 to see what new attendees were in my trap.

The stunning White Ermine and Buff Ermine were there along with a Small Rivulet and a Brimstone.

White Ermine

Buff Ermine

Small Rivulet

Brimstone

  I managed an hour back in bed before getting back up for work, on such a nice day too :( We did manage to have a lunch break in Barton-Upon-Humber so shared it with the locals.We bought seed from the Waters Edge centre, I didn't share my actual lunch with them. ;)

Coot relaxing in the sun.

  While driving through another nearby village, Wootton which has a village pond we decided to stop and spend 10 minutes there.The gorgeous water lillies were covering a large portion of the pond.

  It was then we noticed the Swallows swooping down to the water surface to drink or take flies.

  Even while at work most people should be able to take just 5 minutes out and spend that time connecting with Nature instead of being attached to their phone(unless they're using it to take a photo of wildlife ;)).

  Apologies for the lengthy blog, it seemed to carry on longer than I first thought so thank you for sticking with it ;)