Saturday 8 June 2013

8th June 2013

Weather: SE 3, 1/8 cloud, vis 32 miles


Another glorious summer's day - although with early morning news of a female Subalpine Warbler being found on the Great Orme (which you could see from Hilbre - the Orme not the warbler!) Obs regulars are not quite ready to call last orders on spring just yet...

A morning passage of Swifts provided hope that birds were still on the move but there no grounded migrants again and the focus once again turned to the sea, the breeding birds and other aspects of natural history.

The sea produced 4 Great Crested Grebes, 2 Gannets, a few Common and Sandwich Terns and a couple of distant auks. Meanwhile a Small Magpie (Anania hortulata) moth was found in the entrance to the Obs and a few white butterflies were noted included a Green-veined.


Breeding birds included the first fledged Linnets of the year as well as the first juvenile Meadow Pipit (seen yesterday). The female Mallard was noted (along with three drakes, and the pair of Blackbirds were active early morning only (before the sun started to bake the island and its residents). Dunnocks fluttered about the lower trapping areas and the Swallows continue to carry nest material, but most intriguingly was an adult Pied Wagtail feeding a recently fledged juvenile in the Obs garden and later on the Landrover shed.  There is also the possibility (only a possibility) of a new breeding species for Hilbre - but news on that later in the season...

(JE, NDW, PSW & SRW) 

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