CES 8, not just birds

Mid July and numbers of juveniles being ringed on the Teifi marsh at our CES site is increasing as expected. A juvenile Willow Tit was the only surprise amongst the 31 young Dunnocks, Wrens, Reed and Sedge Warblers, Bullfinches, Reed Buntings, Robins,Chiffs, Blackcaps, Great, Long-tailed and Blue Tits. A total of 54 birds were caught of which 39 were new. The same session last year was similar with 29 of 44 new birds being juveniles.
With several pairs of hands around for this session we ran a moth trap overnight in the slate waste, scrubby area next to the reed bed. This used to be a regular event at our CES sessions and some excellent species have been recorded with the help of Tony Lewis and Janet. This week Karen was in charge.

It was a cold clear night so the catch was small but some good species were caught including this Annulet.

As the distribution maps shows (from the excellent Butterfly Conservation site) , it has quite a limited range

A total of 18 species were caught. 6 of the Micro moths were new records.
Mothing at ringing sessions has proved particularly useful at ringing demonstrations when birds are slow to be caught as children seem to be universally fascinated by moths. It has also stimulated some others of the group to start catching in their own gardens. As a result I was lucky enough to catch a very unusual moth for this far west in my garden today - a Beautiful Hook-tip, only the 3rd record for Ceredigion and one which has never yet been caught in Pembrokeshire.

All records are submitted to County Recorders to go into national databases to monitor biodiversity changes.
Next blog - back to birds...........