The gloom can be beaten

Cracking views over D res at Tophill Low NR, East Yorks this weekend. The darkness mid-afternoon Saturday kind of sums up how awkward the weekend weather was. Wetter the weather, the harder it is to find something good... meaning it is more likely I can be found drinking tea and eating a variety of exceedingly good cakes instead of being out in the field.

However, Tophill was like a 'mini' Minsmere this weekend... Ruff, Black-tailed Godwits, Dunlin, Greenshanks et al all present. Fair enough, numbers not hurting the pencil lead as they have done in the past but there are birds if you look. One assumes another Black-necked Grebe was present on Sunday, maybe 2+ in the last week and a '2nd winter' Mediterranean Gull was around early evening. I aged it as a '2nd winter' as it was hard work finding those short primaries so it was in some sort moult, but it was certainly regulation otherwise. I seem to have spent too long over the weekend sat going through the gulls dropping in, maybe the addiction of going through them means I shall be spending many cold nights during the winter going through the birds rather than retiring to the comfort of sitting in front of a nice warm fire!!! One more campaign won't harm!

The latest addition to the Tophill fungi list, species 270 is Coprinellus domesticus found by Doug Fairweather while I was proving I couldn't increase the wader numbers!!!

Difficult to do much on the Odonata front. A couple of Migrant Hawkers, our first of the season, are rather belated. After a great start, species are available to see in small numbers. Just one of those summers when the day's off don't fall on the bright sunny days!

As for the moths, the lights struggled to catch any Large Yellow Underwings which means chances of trapping much else of note inland is either limited or down to good luck. The usual procession of egg boxes came out of the traps on Saturday morning. Interestingly, while we are struggling to catch Large Yellow Underwings, I'm lost as to when the last Angle Shades was in a trap, but Southern Wainscots (below) seem to be appearing in small numbers after a relative absence in recent years. Moths will never cease to surprise, they always seem to pose questions!