Thursday 25 August 2016

Night of the bush cricket

Lade - warm, dry, sunny, sw 3 - With the overnight temperature hovering around 20C, and high humidity, it proved to be a stinker for trying to get some sleep, even down here on the coast where normally its a bit fresher. And then at 2am with the window wide open we had an interloper in the form of a `singing` cricket which sounded incredibly loud in the dead of night in a confined space.
As I couldn't sleep I then spent the next hour crawling around the bedroom with a torch trying to locate the noisy insect, but once it sensed the light it ceased its racket and I could not find it. Anyhow, as it had stopped `singing` I drifted off to sleep, only to be rudely woken later by Mrs PT when the cricket hopped up on the bed and crawled over her arm!  Being a caring naturalist I soon had the critter potted up and into the fridge til daybreak, and nodded off back to sleep...
  It proved to be a splendid Great Green Bush-cricket, which was duly released into the garden.

                               Great Green Bush-cricket

And so to moths, predictably there was a decent haul of 41species of macros including Jersey Tiger, Gold Spots, Burnished Brass and a migrant Gem, new for the year. The garden buddleia bush was on top form attracting at least four Hummingbird Hawk-moths, a count of 25 Small Tortoiseshells, Peacocks, Admirals, Small and Large Whites, Holly Blue, Silver Ys, a Comma and several bees that I`m still trying to identify.
  All quiet over the pits with the only warblers of note 10 Common Whitethroats and a Lesser Whitethroat feeding on blackberries.

                                Gold Spot

                               Gem, an irregular migrant

                                One of four Hummers on the buddleia

Dungeness - 1430-1600hrs - Probably the quietest seawatch of the year in the company of PB, MH and BC. Still, the cooling breeze off the sea and lively banter made up for the lack of birds.

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