Peter Jones Wildlife blog

 Quite a surprise, during a family visit to Brighton. A Bloxworth Snout found flying around the seafront. A species I was unfamiliar with, and it is very rare in UK! Restricted to the South Coast where it is a rare immigrant, although it looks like small colonies are forming along the coast, including at Brighton. #Moths

My recent trip to Thailand was one of a number to take full advantage of ebird/citizen science data in compiling routes, places to visit, and target species. I have used the ebird target lists quite comprehensively to draw up a number of new species to look for, and often in the back of my mind was concerned that this approach is steering me away from other species in the area, but not on my target list. Perhaps not the best examples, but I headed to Pak Thale with Nordman's Greenshank, Long-toed Stint, and Far Eastern Curlew in mind, but the target species approach doesn't highlight that the area is also populated by Common Greenshank, Temmincks Stint, and Eurasian Curlew. Is there a danger of the target lists steering you towards seeing what you want to see? In the opposite direction, the pitfalls can be even more dramatic if you are lucky enough to find a rare bird for the area.. is it even listed in the target list! So when I ended my trip, albeit fairly shattered, patientl

Performed not one, but two reptile surveys this weekend. Neither were particularly memorable,  a few Common Lizards at Burley, and a single Slow Worm at Godshill. I blame the weather!  In between, I headed to Hurst Castle where I finally caught up with Dew Moth, and also Sea Pea, plus a few other new plants. Overnight I ran a moth trap from the campervan at Hurst Cut bridge, that went well. Delicate and Dog's tooth both new ones, and a lot of Middle Barred Minors amongst the other species. Delicate Dog's Tooth  Dew Moth

The East winds are still keeping the moth traps results pretty low at the moment, but today at least had a bit of quality with 2 new species: Rustic Shoulder Knot (fairly common, but eluding me up until now), and Buttoned Snout (nationally scarce, with me being just on the edge of their range). Other species included Sharp-angled peacock, Brussels lace, Straw Dot, Willow Beauty, Buff Ermine, Flame Shoulder, Ribbon Wave, Pale Tussock, Ringed China Mark, Treble lines, Brown silver line, Heart and dart, Shuttle-shaped Dart, Garden Carpet, and Small Magpie. Rustic Shoulder Knot Buttoned Snout

Perhaps one of the last things to return to normal for me after the pandemic. I've enrolled as a "Casual Surveyor" this year to maintain my license whilst I think about whether committing more fully in future years. I chose one of the best locations today for my survey, but the reptiles were elusive, which is often the case as we head into the summer months. 1 reptile recorded, and it was a Smooth Snake which was a nice bonus. This one probably lingering under the refugia while it shedded it's skin. Note the cloudy eye as evidence of shedding.  Also in the New forest today. A few Heath Sptted Orchid, Lesser Butterfly Orchid and Bastard Balm (very rare in UK, but one I forget I saw a couple of weeks ago in France!!)

I have the Collins wildflower guide and the Wildflower key. Both excellent, but I have all too often resorted to skimming through the pages looking for a pictorial match! Or even worse, going straight to a photo, and onto inaturalist, which is becoming very lazy and in danger of teaching me nothing along the way. My problem is that the keys, especially the initial key, in both books ask questions that I have no idea what the answer is! Once I'm at the right family, then I'm happy to follow the text and work the species out. So I stumbled across the "Pocket guide to wildflower families" So far, this seems to answer my prayers, asking simpler questions in order to focus me into the right area of the field guides. It also has page references for the relevant pages of the main field guides. So far, so good with a fairly straightforward path through the Q&A to one of my more common garden flowers, confirmed as Cleavers! Hopefully onto some more challenges i

  Provence Orchid Tau Emperor A short, but busy few days in the French Alps. The emphasis was on Butterflies, Wildflowers, and the Moth trap. Vercors National Park is a fairly large, and spectacular range of mountains and forested valleys South West of Grenoble. Several operators run dedicated trips to the area, in particular Naturetrek and Greenwings, plus a couple of independent operators, so plenty of useful info is available on the internet. iNaturalist also continues to be a very useful source of information, particularly if you can interrogate the database and download species with waypoints. The downside of this is that I set off with a whole list of waypoints for target species of flowers but never really got a grip on where the villages and hotspots actually were in relation to each other. Nevertheless, pretty much all of the time was spent in flower-rich meadows, and the overnight moth traps were successful. Butterflies were more of a struggle and I didn't see that many s

Bar-backed Partridge This trip was a couple of years in the making, and by the time it came around, I had a good idea of exactly where I wanted to go, and what to hopefully see. My plan was to fly into Bangkok, and head straight for Phetchaburi region. Spending a day or so looking for Spoon-billed Sandpiper and other waders, then moving inland to Kaeng Krachen for the forest birds. With a day and a half to return to Bangkok, I could focus on some birds I have missed. Apart from Bangkok, the roads / driving was very relaxed, and distances weren't that great. Ebird has revolutionised birding trips, and it was quite easy to find hotspots along the way to check out. Similarly, AirBnb has made it very straightforward to find cheap, safe, convenient accommodation at short notice. The birding throughout the time was very enjoyable, with a mix of: 1. Many new species, including Broadbills, Pitta, Crake, and Bitterns. plus the rare waders around Pak Thale. 2. Species that had eluded me on p

Sunday was sunny and well below freezing, nice Winter weather. A few Med Gulls on the shore at Lepe, and fortunately I picked up two species that had been seen on-and-off recently: An Avocet at Stansore, and a Goshawk overhead. Other additions for the year were Moorhen(!), Reed Bunting(!!), Jay (!!!), and Little Egret(!!!!). An extreme example why trying to see a maximum number of species in a day is always flawed with some common species just going AWOL. I'm pretty sure Lepe has a 100 species day possible, with spring migrants, and a lot of luck! for now I'm on 86 species, which is good for my standards in January. Photos with the P1000 are still coming along nicely. The digital zoom gets results, unlike the P900. There has definitely been a fix there! The Kestrel was a distant dot, and the still captured from video at 3000mm, plus 2.4 digital zoom on top of that! The Stonechat was much closer, and handheld.   

A video testing the extreme range of the p1000. 

Just getting a feel for how things look on a big screen

Sunday morning had the best of the weekend weather, so I headed to Lepe in search of a few common winter species still missing from my challenge. Turned out ok with Marsh Harrier and Gadwall present, plus Egyptian Goose which wasn't really on my radar, but not unusual anywhere these days. In other news, I traded my p900 in for a P1000. Had considered this a while back but was kind of forced into it as the p900 seems to make labouring noises during zooming, and is presumably unsupported nowadays. The P1000 has familiar features, but is a much better camera. I was pleasantly surprised in that the digital zoom is usable right to the maximum extreme, on a tripod. The Egyptian Goose below was in the digital zoom range, although looks to be struggling when viewed at full size.

After a couple of enjoyable mornings at Lepe towards the end of the year which included Spoonbill, Red-breasted Merganser, Firecrest, Merlin, and Great Northern Diver, I decided to buy an annual car park ticket, and spend a bit more time there in 2023. It is a location that I visited regularly a few years ago, and recall seeing Slavonian Grebe, Black Brant, Turtle Dove, Nightingale and bizarely, an escaped Turkey Vulture soaring overhead! Others have had good success here with Caspian Tern, and  Rose Coloured Starling over the years. This coincided nicely with Patchwork Challenge, a competition between birders to encourage low carbon, local birding, as opposed to travelling the country. So, I have drawn up a 3km square including the coast between Beaulieu Estuary and the private stretch of SSSI beach between Lepe and Calshot, the Blackwater flooded fields, and some farmland and woodland inland of Lepe. My first day of 2023 went well..  https://ebird.org/checklist/S125189275 Highlight b

A week holiday in South Africa with my youngest daughter. This was originally planned for 2020, but postponed a couple of times for obvious reasons. Game drives were excellent in both Pilanesberg, and Madikwe, and a host of good mammals and birds were seen. The bird species total hampered slightly due to the same open plains habitat throughout the week. Photos and videos in link https://photos.app.goo.gl/RZSemrx7jkyPDdEn8

I took the moth trap on this year's family holiday to the South of France. We stayed on the Mediterranean coast near the Spanish border, but to be honest, the campsite wasn't particularly good for wildlife compared to previous campsites. The site itself was very built up, and the surrounding area, although looking promising on Google maps, was a bit light in diversity. I did see the following highlights... Turkish Gecko Lang's short tailed blue Coypu Red-rumped Swallow Southern Wartbiter The moth trap included: Praying Mantis Bright Wave Portland Ribbon Wave Blair's Mocha Vestal (central France) Oak Processionary Small Marbled Scarce bordered Straw Tree lichen Beauty Marbled Green Pearly Underwing Turnip Long legged Tabby Delightful Marbled Handmaid idaea cervantaria achyra nudalis parascotia nisseni stemmatophora brunnealis oncocera semirubella (Central France) acrobasis tumidana Which looking back, wasn't a bad tally of moths, was expecting huge number

Third year running, I headed out to New Forest in search of Moonwort. Despite having found grid references of their location, and even worked out the exact area from photos posted online of happy surveyors counting them, I'd drawn a blank previously. This year, the area has been loosely marked off with piles of dirt, but it still took an hour of searching before I wandered into the area beyond the "line of molehills". Within a minute I'd found Moonwort and Adder's Tongue a minute or so later. Smaller than I was expecting, which doesn't help, but nice to see, finally.

A very good Autumn, with plenty of moth trapping in the garden. The highlight a fairly tatty, but nevertheless spectacular Clifden Nonpareil. Other highlights came from a week in Norfolk, timed well with some East winds. At Winterton, I was lucky to find a Red-breasted Flycatcher, right place at the right time as it flew round the edge of some dense sycamores, then took over half an hour to get identifiable views. (A very long 30 minutes!). Could have quite easily walked past it, as indeed a few other birders had done so, but it showed well to a few of us eventually. Spent a couple of days seawatching prior to this, as the winds were strong, and from the north. Highlight was a Sabine's Gull, several of which were being reported around the coast, but I failed to see any Long tailed Skua which also seemed to be reported during the week. The other highlight from my week was a Camberwell Beauty flying strongly west, over my head and out of sight, as I walked to the ice crea

 Had a few days free to visit Scotland, and decided to try and see some new Dragonfly species, plus a few Orchids restricted to the North of the UK. I was in my campervan, so the timetable was very flexible, and subject only to the weather. The initial couple of days had a good forecast, so I focussed on the Dragonflies. First stop was Allt Mhuic butterfly reserve, in search of Azure Hawker. I was unsuccessful, except for a likely individual flying lower over the boggy moorland. I did however, see Chequered Skipper which was a massive bonus, being right at the end of their flight season, and quite unexpected. Moths put in a good appearance with Argent and Sable, Small Argent and Sable, plus Satin Lutestring. Finally some good flowers here including Heath Fragrant Orchid and Common Butterwort. The hydro-electric dam is currently being built right down the middle of the reserve, which looks to have affected the central area. I decided to move on, thinking I had a better chance of more Dr

  Turned my attention over the last few months to trying to break my Bird day record of 100, which, according to ebird is now 99! Not sure where I lost a species, but gave me more incentive to get over 100 in a day. I try to just do my own thing, and limit myself to 20 miles from home. This isn't a big deal as it includes the coast, Keyhaven and Pennington, the New Forest, Blashford, and the Test Valley. These areas have kept me entertained for over 10 years, so plenty to find, especially Keyhaven and Pennington which is always likely to give a big number of species in 2 or 3 hours. Winter attempts fell just short, in the 90s. Short days, and finding the New Forest very difficult didn't help. Then the lockdown put paid to any further attempts. May, however, with longer days, and the mass of summer visitors turned the challenge on its head. First attempt I got 106, and this weekend I hit 110! My route was New Forest at dawn, Keyhaven, Blashford, Stockbridge area, Fishlake Meadow