Retired (nearly).

I'm still officially in post until the end of the holidays in mid-August, but I don't really have to do anything. I pretty much emptied and tidied the office the other day, a week after the end of term. Check emails once a week or so. Time to get my head around what this means. I don't feel old anyway, well mostly not, work was getting to be a struggle, just having the energy in the morning and finding it hard to find the time to do the things I wanted to do as well as work.

One thing that vexes somewhat is what to do with what's in my head, the experience and knowledge, is it useful to anyone? Or is that just ego? Hard to know at the moment.

All this in my life has left the blog unwritten and friends, mostly, incommunicado. We've had visits from two lots of old friends, and I had dos to go to. Seeing old friends after so long was fun (and a bit boozy). The work dos were in retrospect a bit overwhelming. A couple of folk who I've worked with for years phoned and were very complimentary and kind. 

My new job is full-time wildlife stuff, maybe it's time to be old, radical and a pain in the arse (after all I was very good at the PITA at work as far as some of management were concerned, so I'm well in practise).

The notebook is filling up with data again as the moth traps kick out lots of interesting things. And searching with the camera has uncovered plenty. I really wonder why I didn't buy the Olympus kit before, the macro gear is stunningly good, but perhaps I wasn't ready to take the step from the TG-4 earlier. The Jackdaws and Rooks in the roost have just woken up, noisily, maybe a Grey Heron has tried to join them, they're not keen on that occurring.

If this is Celypha rivulana it will be new for the county, I think I have it right. No I didn't it is Phiaris schulziana, thanks SG.

I also found this by searching in the Rosebay Willowherb.

It was provisionally identified as Piniphila bifasciana (thanks BS), I'd initially wondered about a Cydia but I have had a wonder about Phiaris micana, BS is most likely correct, it's with the CR now. And eventually identified as Eupoecilia angustana,

The usual crowd pleasers have begun to turn up with a very nice Acleris bergmanniana today, although it failed to pose. This Gold Spot was fresh and showed off.

Gold Spot.

One project is to put all my species on to Flickr, an Orkney invert reference place. So I'm trying to standardise the "from the trap" photos a bit, some of these things look smarter on the grey of slate, no distractions.

On the bird front, The Shunan has plenty of Shelduck chicks, an eight and a three. A third brood of Shoveler have just appeared, a five. And I suspect the Teal have well grown chicks. We had a day on Hoy where I bumped into Quail, but I will try and post a retrospective of that day shortly.

Time to nip out with the torch and see if I can find anything, the Ghosts have been dancing...