Thanks to all our friends at Tice’s and Moor Green who supported us with these events, and contributed material to this write up.
“Nice to get a waved black, nationally scarce“
Mammal walk at Colebrook lake
Mammal survey at Colebrook lake
45 traps were put out on Thursday and our wildlife expert, Bernard, returned on Friday to add more bait to the traps and then set them.
A glorious day, with wall to wall sunshine, heralded the first event of the Festival – a walk along the north shore of Colebrook lake to check the traps and see which rodents had been found.
Bernard had lots of enthusiastic young helpers to locate the traps, retrieve them and the marker stakes, and then clean out the traps.
14 mice were found, regretfully no voles or shrews.
Then came the exciting process of extracting the mice, sexing them, before releasing them back into the wild.
Moth survey at Tice’s Meadow
Moth survey at Tice’s Meadow
This moth survey was a huge success – a great evening’s mothing.
We were delighted to be joined by new visitors and well as some familiar faces, including the amazing Ben, who despite being a young lad, outshone all our experts with his ID skills and 700+ moth list. He amazed everyone with his knowledge and enthusiasm.
We found 3 new moth species for the site, including a Waved Black, which was a lifer for all present. An interesting selection of birds were also observed, including – Arctic Tern, Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Common Sandpiper, Green Sandpiper, Snipe and Hobby.
We ended the evening by Len using his telescope to show Jupiter, its moons and Saturn with its rings on a bright evening.
Moth survey at Rowhill
Unfortunately this last event of the Festival was cancelled due to bad weather.
