Taicynhaeaf Moths

 

We recently rented a cottage at Taicynhaeaf sitting in the hills just above the Mawddach valley. It was for a family holiday but before you travel, thoughts stray to birding and to Dippers, Pied Flycatchers and Wood Warblers, all birds that I am unlikely to see in Sussex. We were only about a mile from the Coed Garth Gell nature reserve a place I had always wanted to visit and the birds were sure to be there.

Once you arrive reality steps in and you realise that you came to be with the family and in particular with the grandchildren. Covid has caused too many separations and time to bond with the family and for the enjoyment that brings takes priority even over the birding. Coed Garth Gell will have to wait for another time.

I still managed to find some time for solitude and for nature. I am an early riser and being up at five in the morning to empty the moth trap, before the rest of the house is stirring, is a great way to start the day.

Lobster Moth - Stauropus fagi

I had expected a different range of moths but just how different really surprised me. I put the trap out on the night we arrived and just after midnight I went out to take a look. I counted seven Lobster moths sitting on the outside of the trap and on the adjacent wall. Although not uncommon this is a moth I had never seen before. There were other moths on the wall as well and I needed to pot them or get them into the trap to ensure the birds did not feast on them before I got up the next morning.

Lobster Moth - Stauropus fagi

Excitement overcame me and I failed to give due note to the midges that I could see flying around the trap. I was in shorts and short sleeved shirt but I thought a couple of bites were a good price to pay to ensure I did not miss any of the moths. The morning found me in some discomfort having given up counting at a hundred bites on my legs alone. I had also forgotten just how bad midge bites can be. It's not the surgical strike of a mosquito more a jagged and infected chewing of the skin that takes up to two weeks to die down. Still the moths were good and at least the rest of the family had a good laugh! 

Pale Tussock - Calliteara pudibunda

I felt some sense of satisfaction the next morning when I found about a quarter of an inch layer of dead midges in the bottom of the trap but it was short lived. It raises so many questions. How long do midges live? Had the trap killed them? Do midges bite moths and if so what had it been like for the moths in the trap? So much still to learn and understand.

Green Arches - Anaplectoides prasina

I put the trap out every night and found something new every morning, coming home with a list of twenty six new moths. The first and last nights were the best of the holiday, having overcast and humid conditions with low wind speeds but all the mothing sessions were enjoyable. Its like opening an unexpected present every day.

Drinker - Euthrix potatoria

The following are a selection of some of the better moth pictures from the holiday.

Barred Red - Hylaea fasciaria

Beautifull Snout - Hypena crassalis

Purple Clay - Diarsia brunnea

Brussels Lace - Cleorodes lichenaria

Clouded-bordered Brindle - Apamea crenata

Fox Moth - Macrothylacia rubi

Pale-shouldered Brocade - Lacanobia thalassina

Garden Tiger - Arctia caja

Green Oak Tortrix - Tortrix viridana

Grey Arches - Polia nebulosa

I think, a July Belle - Scotopteryx luridata plumbaria

Peppered Moth - Biston betularia

Green Silver-Lines - Pseudoips prasinana britannica

Triple-spotted Clay - Xestia ditrapezium

True Lover's Knot - Lycophotia porphyrea

What other mothing delights were waiting in the hills and woods for me to find and will I ever get back for another look?

Note

Coed Garth Gell nature reserve. I have noticed that the RSPB, Google maps and probably others have started referring to it as RSPB Mawddach Woodlands. I am not a great supporter of Welsh nationalism or the welsh language but surely this is a battle that must be fought. You cannot lose that name.

Kent's Magnificent Moths

 

With the arrival of June and some warmer weather, the mothing season really gets under way. I had set myself a few targets for the year. The first two were the Orange Underwing and the Light Orange Underwing back in March and April. I missed them both. A combination of cold weather, lack of time to search and possibly the wrong locations, had seen me off to a bad start.

My next targets were three or four of the rarer moths in Kent at the beginning of June. It was all looking good but then a late change in the weather nearly wiped out my three day stay and the planned search. Day one it rained, day two it rained but I did get a few hours of sun in the morning and day three I found myself searching Samphire Hoe in what was  either low cloud or thick fog. It's not rain but you get just as wet.

On day two there were a few hours of sun in the morning so I started at Denge Wood. The target was the White-spotted Sable. It's a big wood and a small moth but I did eventually find a good spot with probably ten to twenty flying.

White-spotted Sable - Anania funebris

Finding the spot was good but getting a picture was near impossible. They are very active, difficult to follow and good at hiding under the leaves of various plants. Any attempt to approach them seemed to trigger them to flight. After about an hour of trying I decided to pot one and get a record shot. The clouds were approaching and I wanted to get to the next site. It's not the picture I wanted but at least I had found the moth.

I will be trying to improve on the picture later in the year, when second broods should be appearing on a couple of sites in Sussex

On my way back to the car I passed through a small clearing and was delighted to see Yellow-barred Longhorn dancing in the sunbeams. The one below taking a break from the action!

Yellow-barred Longhorn - Nemophora degeerella

My next target was the Black-veined Moth at Wye NNR. By the time I got there it had clouded over and was threatening rain. It looked like a lost cause. It was too cold and windy for them to be flying and the chances of  disturbing one from the long grass were slim. Still I was there so I might as well have a look.

Someone must have felt sorry for me that day. As I crested the hill and looked down into the valley there was a team of six or seven people systematically contouring the slope searching the grass and undergrowth. They were part of the "Kent's Magnificent Moths" team and were just finishing a survey of the site looking for evidence of the Black-veined moth.

Black-veined Moth - Siona lineata

I am not sure they really wanted me around but I had spotted a couple of them taking pictures so my task was easy. I took a few quick shots and headed back to the car, just making it before the rain started.

Black-veined Moth - Siona lineata

Black-veined Moth - Siona lineata

Black-veined Moth - Siona lineata

Only two moths out of the four I was targeting but given the weather it was a good result. I also checked out a couple of the other sites and will return next year to continue the search.

Spotted Frog Hybrid

 

The Dark Side is calling, Orchids that is. It all got a bit too complicated for me. Once you have seen all the main species or nearly all, then you get dragged into hybrids and colour variants. The scope is huge and the opinions even bigger. 

I had decided no more orchids but then you pause to look, you take a picture, put a name to it and the Dark Side calls you back.

There were the Lady and Butterfly orchids in Denge Wood. I was on my knees photographing a moth and they were just in front of me. I couldn't just walk away.

A Pyramidal Orchid in the fog at Samphire Hoe.

We visited Fairmile Bottom, me looking for moths whilst Dave checked out the Orchids. Nice Bee Orchids amongst lots of others species but not many moths.

Hybrids leading to huge specimens

Frog Orchids but I was really starting to loose interest. Then Dave pointed out something a bit more unusual. A Frog Orchid x Common Spotted Orchid hybrid. Dactylorhiza viridis x Dactylorhiza fuchsii giving rise to  Dactylorhiza x mixtum. Not much of a name but the flower was interesting.

Just past their best but six different plants in a small area showing a good colour variation. There may have been more there but we did not see them.

It was interesting and worth recording but I have to remind myself, that it was the hybrids and the difficulty of identifying them, that caused me to loose interest in Orchids.

The Light Side still holds sway.

Canada and Alaska 1 - Calgary

 

With Covid restrictions easing Sue and I finally got the go ahead for a Rocky Mountaineer and Alaska Cruise tour we had booked back in 2019. You couldn't class it as a birding holiday but it had been planned to coincide with the spring migration and I expected to be able to free up plenty of time to go looking for birds. Sue does not generally show any interest in sightseeing between dawn and breakfast and there would also be long periods at sea off the western coast of Canada and Alaska for Pelagic birding.

It didn't all go to plan, as you will see, and there were some disappointments on the birding front but I still came away with a number of life ticks and a few good pictures.

We flew into Calgary for an overnight stop arriving late afternoon giving me an hour in the evening and a few hours the following morning before we needed to board a coach for the trip up to Banff for a three night stay in the National Park. One of the real benefits of air travel east to west is that whatever time you go to sleep you are wide awake about three in the morning and ready to go birding.

There are some great birding places around Calgary but given the time available the only one I could get to was Prince's Island Park in the Bow River just a few minutes from the hotel where we were staying. I got off to a good start, Canada Goose, hundreds of them but at least they were genuine, Mallards, Starlings, Rock Doves, that is feral pigeon to me, Common Merganser (Goosander), Red-breasted Merganser, and even an American Robin which I had seen for the first time in England only a few weeks earlier.

American Robin

Not the start I was looking for but there were other birds about and even a few decent pictures to be taken.

Northern Flicker

There are two variants of the Northern Flicker, the red shafted in the west and the yellow shafted in the east. This particular bird is probably an intergrade showing features of both, the red malar of the red shafted but the red on the nape suggesting a yellow shafted.

Black-billed Magpie - Pica Hudsonia

Black-capped Chickadee

Juvenile Coopers Hawk

I think the identification of the hawk is correct but unfortunately it didn't like having the camera pointed at it and flew off before I could get a view from the front.

American Wigeon

Song Sparrow

I also found this White-throated Sparrow whilst walking to the park before dawn. It appears to have flown into one of the high rise buildings and was lying stunned on the pavement. The picture was taken in the dark at 1/3 sec on a 600mm lens so is not the best, however, I am pleased to report that after a few minutes it seemed to recover and hopped away into some cover.

White-throated Sparrow - pre dawn 1/3sec on a 600mm lens

It does make you wonder if birding around the base of the high rise buildings would have been more productive than birding the park.

Also seen around the park were American Crow, Brown-headed Cowbird, variants of the Fliker and a Woodpecker heard but not seen.

The trip up to Banff viewing through the coach window added Bald Eagles and Trumpeter Swans to my holiday list. There were also a few smaller birds that I could not identify and a good number of places that I would have liked to stop and explore.

See the details of Banff in the next blog.

Canada and Alaska 2 - Banff

 

Arriving in Banff and having a quick look around I saw my birding plans start to unravel. Banff is a nice town but there were a lot of people there and according to locals we were lucky that we had arrived early in  the season before the crowds arrived. Worse still there was an absence of birds. No swallows nesting under the Bow River bridge, which looked as though it had recently been renovated. No ducks or bird life along the river and a late afternoon walk around the Fenland Trail, which has a bird list of 155 recorded on e-bird, gave me nothing at all.

There also seemed to be a lot of snow on the mountains. In one respect we were happy, as we had come early in the season, to see the Rockies with snow on them but there looked to be a bit more than we had expected. Again talking to locals we found that Canada had suffered one of its coldest winters on record and that Spring was running two to three weeks late. All my careful planning on hitting the spring migration was going wrong.

The next morning I checked out the Bow River and the bridge again with my only sightings being Magpies, American Crows and House Sparrows. Fortunately Cascade Gardens (e-bird list 53) had a few Dark-eyed Juncos foraging on the grass. These look like the Slate-coloured subspecies and are resident year round in the area. 

Dark-eyed Junco - male

Dark-eyed Junco - Female

The rest of the day was spent on a scenic tour along the Icefield Parkway up to the Bow Summit and Athabasca Glacier. Very impressive but the Lake Louise area was covered in snow, they had been ice skating on the lake only a few days earlier and there was no access to Peyto Lake, both planned birding spots. 

Some of my main targets, Clark's Nutcracker, Steller's Jay, Gray Jay where to be found in this area. Instead I had American Crows and Black-billed Magpies. The one consolation was Cliff Swallows which I knew nested on the Lake Louise Hotel. I could see the swallows but I could not get a decent picture or see enough detail to identify the bird. Fortunately the distinctive nests were visible, if distant, and if you blow the picture up big enough you can just make out the red face of a Cliff Swallow emerging from one of the nests under construction.

Cliff Swallow nests - managing to defeat the anti nest defenses

Also at Lake Louise, I got caught out by this one, I thought Chipmunk but when trying to sort out which Chipmunk I found it was a Golden-mantled ground squirrel. Looks as though it is also in search of spring and some snow free ground.

Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel

Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel

Further down the road, at one of the viewpoints, there were a few birds harassing the tourists for food.

Brown-headed Cowbird

Brown-headed Cowbird - Female

Raven as UK

A stop at the services at the Saskatchewan river crossing gave me another new bird which after much searching I have down as a female Purple Finch.

Purple Finch -female

Purple Finch - female

Our brief stay in Banff was coming to an end and I hadn't seen many birds. Our plan for the last day was an early morning visit to the Cave and Basin area for me whilst Sue had a lie in and then a  trip on the Banff Gondola up to Sulphur Mountain where I again had hopes of seeing the Clark's Nutcracker, Fox Sparrows and other high altitude birds that I had pencilled in on my wish list.

The Gondola trip on Sulphur Mountain is easy to deal with. The the top was mostly snowed in although the boardwalk out to the Cosmic Ray Station on Sanson's Peak was open. There were snow flurries around and a cold wind. The only birds seen were Ravens and a few Crows. The views were spectacular but perhaps not so spectacular if you were more interested in the birds. Venturing further afield on the mountain, in search of some avian life, was out of the question without full winter mountain gear and a good knowledge of the area.

I was left with the Cave and Basin area which is fed by hot springs as my best option for picking up a few birds. See the next blog for details.