Peter Jones Wildlife blog

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.