NEW DAWN

It was worth being up at dawn on Tuesday 19th just to admire the pink sky from the country park. The moth trap had been running all night and it was important to switch it off and clear the trap away before the jays came looking for breakfast. They could have had quite a feast as the tally was about 190 moths of 40 species.
A few new ones for the year included the swallow-tailed moth, dusky brocade, brown silver lines, bordered pug, broad-barred white, white plume, small magpie and the magpie moth pictured below. There was also a privet hawk-moths and a couple of elephant hawk-moths.

Several lime trees are in full flower at the moment and you can certainly notice the sweet fragrant smell whenever you walk close to one of the trees. If you stand under one of these lime trees it feels like it's starting to rain, as the tiny drops of honey-dew drop from the leaves.
During the day there is a constant buzzing sound from the tops of the trees as the bees, flies and other insects are busy visiting all the flowers.

The insect night-shift takes over after dark and below is a large yellow underwing probing its long proboscis-tongue after the sweet nectar. Several pale arches were also busy visiting the flowers after dark and in one flowering clump, a red admiral butterfly was spotted in the torch-light looking well camouflaged as it snoozed with its wings closed.

As the day started to brighten up, the familiar sound of the turtle dove could be heard beside the car park. Sightings of turtle dove this year have been very poor with very few returning from Africa to nest here. The occasional one that is seen in the park appears to be the one normally seen along the nearby Bromans Lane.

The nightingales showed well in the car park early in the morning, calling out loudly to each other. Although the birds stopped singing about two weeks ago, they can still be located by their "wheet-wheet" calls. They seem to get quite agitated if you can mimic the calls and one of the birds perched in the hedge providing really good close views even without binoculars. The bill opened really wide as the bird put lots of effort into each "wheet" call, whilst cocking its nice orangey tail upwards at the same time. Occasionally one of the birds would croak with its strange frog-type call.

A pair of common whitethroats are frantically trying to feed their demanding chicks with enough food, flying back and forth across the car park. The nest is in my front garden hedge so the birds are rather anxious if anyone interrupts their flightpath or loiters too close to the hedge.