Too windy for ringing unfortunately, even early this morning. A south westerly is just no good for ringing here due to the position of the nets and lack of protection from the wind in this direction. We had a Grey Wagtail over in the morning. The Cuckoo was darting back and forth on the grazing marsh earlier in the day. There was a bit of a passage of Gulls, with 160 Black-headed Gulls and 16 Med Gull moving east mid-morning and some hawking on insects in the summer warmth.

A busy moth day with 120 individuals of 43 species! The moth trap was dominated again by Cinnabar with 49. We also had 3 Sharp Angled Peacock, 1 Brimstone, 1 Green Carpet, 8 White Ermine, 1 Twin-barred Knot Horn, 4 Treble Lines, 2 Straw Dot, 1 Diamondback, 1 Sulphur Bark Moth, 1 Brindled Buff, 5 Fern, 3 Pine Cone Moth, 1 Lyme Grass, 1 Breckland Plume, 1 Common Grey, 1 Meadow Grass Moth, 1 Hoary Tortrix, 1 Pretty Chalk Carpet 1 Water Veneer, 3 Small Elephant Hawk, 2 Middle Barred Minor, 1 Setaceous Hebrew Character, 4 Mottled Rustic, 1 Garden Grass Veneer, 1 Banded Hedge Grey, 3 Brown Moss Moth, 1 Shears, 1 Shore Wainscot, 1 Elephant Hawk, 1 White Point, 2 Small Square Spot, 1 Large Yellow Underwing, 1 Long-horned Flat Body, 1 Single Dotted Wave, 1 Common Marbled Carpet, 1 Broad Barred White, 1 Willow Beauty, 1 Rufous Tortrix, 1 Pallid Grey, 1 Buff Tip and 1 Giant Water Veneer, phew, a lot of moths! We saw our first Cinnabar Moth caterpillar of the year which are really distinctive yellow and black.

Cinnabar Moth Caterpillar

We had a beautiful day flying moth sighting, with what I believe to be Lesser Banded Longhorn in the Dunes due to size/antennae length. Very similar to Yellow-banded Longhorn which has much longer antenna and is bigger.

Lesser Banded Longhorn

We had Common Blue, Small Heath, Wall Brown and Brown Argus today. For damsel/dragonflies, we only had one Four-spotted Chaser, a few Large Red Damselflies and one Azure Damselfly.

Shannon Clifford – Assistant Warden

NORFOLK BIRD NEWS FROM RARE BIRD ALERT

Norfolk Quail male singing Cley in field east of NWT visitor centre c52.9537,1.0573

Norfolk Marsh Warbler singing Weybourne still west of Beach Road in reedbed SW of beach car park at 6.03am +showing well c52.9473,1.1387. Park at 52.9485,1.1398