A break in the wet and windy conditions resulted in a flurry of migrant birds along Cuttlebrook and a few more moths in the light trap.  Ebird list HERE. Highlights included Yellow Wagtail, Willow Warblers and Blackcaps, all new arrivals to the local patch. Garden moth year list now on 51 species.  Blossom Underwing- a bit of a worn one Red Twin-spot Carpet- the first of the year and quite early too Great Prominent- a couple of these recently  Unidentified gelechid?  Greylags over Cuttlebrook  Found a patch by the brook with lots of animal tracks including ..read more

Just back from a cracking few days in Devon visiting Jaffa and one of Jacob's friends. We stayed in a really cool log cabin at Clifford Park Bridge and did some moth trapping every night there (three nights) which yielded a few moth lifers. On Thursday we visited Pennywell Farm with the kids and on Friday met up with Jaffa and explored the Lower Otter Restoration Project (LORP) and twitched the local Beavers in the evening.  Meanwhile over at Beddington, Mark Bravery found the first Woodchat Shrike for the site, which was a bit gripping!  Male Goosander on the River behind the cabin ..read more

Had a good moth night over the weekend at the rental with 21 species (the best night of the year). Highlight was a Northern Drab- a moth lifer for me (my 981st moth species) which was identified by Martin Townend (Oxon CMR) after I posted an uncertain Orthosia sp to irecord. The same night I had Pinion-spotted Pug and Chamomile Shark with other supporting cast of Pine Beauty and Streamer so a really nice little catch.  Garden moth year list now on 45 species.  Northern Drab.  Comment from Martin: The big thorax, gun-barrel straight costa on very angulated FW make it o ..read more

The flood waters are high again on the Cuttlebrook corridor and a couple of sessions there over the last week with Jacob have been very quiet- just singing Chiffchaffs. However we can't get very far along the brook due to the high flood waters so can't check the best spots.  We spent the last couple of days down at Selsey getting quotes for the reburb before we move in next month. We had a quick visit to Arundel WWT.  Highlights included my first summer migrants for the year, a couple of Sedge Warbler and a Sand Martin, also Green Sandpiper and a calling Tawny Owl. Ebird checklist&nb ..read more

As I have neither a decent garden or a decent local patch at the moment (our move date is set for late May) I've resorted to living in the past and updating my world lists and been revising what I've seen and where.  I'm mainly using Ebird and i-Naturalist and been transferring data from spreadsheets into the central hub of iGoTerra which seems to be the best global pan species listing platform. Natural history is infinitely complex and we all reluctantly have to draw some lines around small parts of it in order to focus so I've more or less limited myself to just recording Birds, Mammals ..read more

  Around this time last year I bought the Canon R7 and finally this week I managed to let go of the money to complete the combo with the RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1L IS USM. This seems to be the new Canon mirrorless standard set up for birders/naturalists. Weighs in at just over 2kg, which for a 500mm quality lens is brilliant.  The main appeal for me is the quality zoom which enables an instant shift from photographing butterflies/moths and reptiles in macro to zooming out for birds. Of course the zoom also means it's suitable for photographing large mammals and cetaceans too. This is a ..read more

Here's a few sounds from Estonia using my recently purchased Zoom H5. More sounds on the trip report HERE. The first time I've encountered many of these Northern WP species since a visit to Finland in 2014 with was equally epic HERE.  ..read more

Spent the last couple of days on Saaremaa island exploring the icy Baltic bays, harbours and coastline. The highlight of the trip were the famous Steller's Eiders that winter here but the supporting cast of thousands of seaducks and waterfowl were equally impressive with thousands of Long-tailed Ducks (the largest winter concentration on the planet), hundreds of Goosanders and Goldeneyes, Red-breasted Mergs and tens of Smews, Eiders, Common and Velvet Scoters and we also picked up the odd Slavonian Grebe, Black-throated Diver and Razorbill. We also had Pygmy Owls and Parrot Crossbills in the p ..read more

We started the day off at 5 am and did a pre-dawn night drive along some local forest tracks. The highlight was a glimpse of a Eurasian Lynx crossing the track. A lifer but barely tickable views unfortunately. We also had Roe Deer, Brown Hare and Arctic Hare. We then spent the first part of the day looking for woodpeckers- we had Middle, Lesser, Great Spotted and Black Woodpecker, Nutcrackers, Common Redpolls, Great Grey Shrike, Marsh and Willow Tits and a small group of the stunning white headed caudatus Long-tailed Tits.  After breakfast and a short break we spent the afternoon che ..read more

As we can't do a Bulgaria spring trip this year I thought I'd take the opportunity to visit another area of the Western Palearctic so after a potential trip to Mauretania fell through this week I did a last minute to Estonia . There's a few mammal and bird ticks for me and I was always interested in visiting the Estonia/Gulf of Finland migration flyway.  This time of year the waterfowl flocks that have wintered in western Europe start heading back to Siberia and concentrate in Estonia. Common Cranes are beginning to arrive too. So while Wheatears, LRPs and Sand Martins mark the beginning ..read more