The last post ....

WhitbyBirding is closing as of today. I'm still blogging but posts will be on the Literate Herring blog - click here to go there. Thank you to all contributors and readers over the last few years, it was fun while it lasted.

Hoverflies etc

Thousands of hoverflies through the garden over the last two days, Wednesday evening and yesterday morning were exceptional. Mostly Episyrphus balteatus but other species involved as well. Found the sawfly Urocerus gigas at the new Pannett Park play ground on Wednesday, had probably emerged from the equipment - very blurry pix only, on BBerry.

Purple Thorn in the house this morning.

Huge numbers of fresh Painted Lady everywhere at the moment, probably 40 or so in the garden at any one time. Also Comma x2 and the next generation of Walls have been emerging over the last couple of days whilst Meadow Brown and Ringlet are hanging on.

Ross's Gull?

BirdGuides is reporting a possible adult Ross's Gull on the East Pier, Whitby Harbour yesterday. A bit annoying as I was a few hundred metres away at lunchtime, so it goes .... not much time today either.

Hummingbird Hawkmoth

One Hummer on the Buddlia again yesterday.

Mothing, birding, butterflying etc

Nick and Sandra brought their moth trap around so first thing this morning we were wading knee deep through Large Yellow Underwings to try to discover the quality within. There are still five or six moths unnamed but on the whole we managed to id them without too much difficulty. A Hummingbird Hawkmoth paid the Buddlia a visit whilst we were doing the id, the third this year. Marbled Beauty is always an attractive thing to find and other common species made up the haul.

Twelve species of butterfly around Scaling Dam today (dipped on a Marsh Harrier) but found Whinchat and Stonechat juvs at the Cleveland end. Comma in the garden at home.

Bits of birding

Dramatic Scaling Dam produced this bit of excitement as the Stoat attempted to murder Moorhens and Mallards.

Other birds present included Green Sandpiper.

Yesterday I went to Kettleness for a brief seawatch. This produced Manx Shearwater, 4; a medium sized annoyingly distant wader and a small annoyingly distant wader as well as a Whimbrel on the shore. Sandwich Terns were trickling south and one Common Tern came west.

On the way to the seawatch there was a Green Sandpiper on the flash by the ex-tip and a Barn Owl just a little further down the road.