A small death

The title of Samantha Crain's album which I'm listening to as I type but also the sad end of a potentially beautiful animal, killed before its first flight.

Curlew 1cy.

There have been a good number of Curlew pairs with chicks around us this year, they will nest in hay and silage fields though. The field was cut yesterday. Our attention was brought to the small tragedy by the Bonxies and Hoodies in the field, arguing over the corpse. By the time I got to take the photo there was little left. They don't stand much chance with modern farm machinery, it's big and fast.

On the positive side one of the Bonxies certainly looked like a 1cy (this year's bird), which is encouraging as skuas are having a pretty grim time.

Sowing Yellow Rattle seeds.

Collect Yellow Rattle seeds now. Rip up a bit of turf and scatter some seeds within. It worked last year and we're starting to get it established. As well as the large area of uncut meadow, full of Orkney Voles but also great for all sorts of insects we're not cutting some fairly large patches of the "lawn", or at least cutting higher and a lot less. I'm trying to improve the plant diversity of the meadow as well, Yellow Rattle helps with that as it parasitises the grasses weakening them and creating gaps. Encouraged by the Adam Frost led episode of Gardeners' World last night, gardens could provide so much more wildlife habitat, there was some good guidance on the programme.

A good patch of Cat's Ear in the "lawn".

Some good news, surprisingly the Arctic Terns are breeding at Skiba Geo, despite apparently deserting the site they returned late and perhaps ten pairs are now breeding with chicks seen today. There appears to be plenty of food, it will depend on the small numbers holding off the skuas and gulls. We saw fledged young from the Skaill colony during the week.

The sky was extraordinary earlier in the week and I had an attempt to see the comet, Neowise. Failed in that but watching the moon rise was, er, cosmic. The cloud was just blobbed on top of the comet I think, this Tuesday is looking possible, no cloud hopefully.

2 a.m. looking NE, noctilucent clouds in the background.

I stayed up through and closed the light traps at about 03:30. 240 moths of 39 species and a fair variety of other things. I'm building up a bit of a backlog of Caddis to ID.

I'd swapped the traps around as I wanted to see what was most effective. The wee Heath trap with the synergetic is probably my most effective trap. The Robinson running a less bright round synergetic with a black light is ok though, I ran that off a battery at the Wee Wood. Earlier in the season when I have run the Robinson with an MV it hasn't done that much better. I'd like to put vanes on the Robinson, I think that might improve it considerably.

Nothing spectacular, a few new for the year, last night's Pinion-streaked Snout is probably the best moth of recent days.

Pinion-streaked Snout.

I've discovered that dissection and fancy solutions are not necessarily essential for gen det on caddis, this helps a lot. I've managed to get a few things to species with more certainty. Here's a new one for me.

A male Limnephilus rhombicus showing the diagnostic genetalia.

Had a bit of an attempt at some sawflies as well. These are not quite as impossible as I thought but there seems to be quite a lot of conflicting information. With some genera it is difficult to be confident about identifications, especially when sites such as Nature Spot and Steven Falk's Flickr appear to conflict (I'm inclined to go along with SF). 

Anyway this one is good, found dead in our pony's water a couple of times.

Pachyprotasis rapae, a fairly straightforward one.

They are certainly attractive insects.