Searching hard for a tiny reward

Well the weekend weather continues to put a spanner in the works for Lepidoptera recording. This weekend no rain, just the joys of autumnal temperatures. Fair to say moth trapping was a disaster at Tophill Low in East Yorks. A 2nd generation Purple Thorn was the only moth of note among the 20 trapped!!!

The wind ensured dragonflies were hard to find. Maybe we did see more than most visitors will have seen but 4 Southern Hawkers, a few darters and the odd Emerald Dam - it was hardly worth the time spent searching for them... let alone typing them on here.

So it was desperate measures to find something different, and perhaps new for the site list.

Trying hard, we found these... less than a centimetre in length, ensuring great difficulty to find on a 300 acre site as we saw perhaps 8! I assume a new species for Tophill... Cicadella viridis

The other highlight of the day was viewing of the new Watton Nature Reserve management policy that sees free range sheep and cattle roaming around giving the area a good grazing and tramping down the water edges, perhaps making it more attractive to waders.

The sheep and the cows seemed rather happy going about their work. This young bull looked most narked...

Not a happy chappy!