The power of the sun

Coming off the back of a cloudy and drizzly week, I love the way that early spring sunshine has the ability to warm crisp March air and accentuate bright colours displayed by hardy, early season roadside flowers - particularly Lesser Celandine and Daffodils. It also has an unrivaled ability to send my motivation to get out and appreciate wildlife into overdrive (much to the annoyance of my dissertation!), so you can imagine I've been making the most of this little spell of golden weather we've been experiencing up in Worcester these past few days.

On Saturday morning I took a stroll down a local wooded footpath with a moth net - more out of hope than expectation - but soon stumbled across Mompha jurassicella flying weakly in the dappled sunshine. This is the 4th individual I've found locally over the past two years, suggesting that isn't quite as rare as the lack of Worcestershire records might imply.

Yesterday saw myself and a couple of friends head over to Grimley Camp Lane Pits in search of early migrants - Sand Martin and Little Ringed Plover being top of the wish list. Neither materialised, but it was just nice to be out with the binoculars again. We had the luxury of a car to ferry us between locations which meant that I could afford to carry a little bit more gear - I opted for the the telephoto lens which, only a couple of posts ago, I said I'd more than likely never use again...

Mompha jurassicella

 

 Beautiful bird, rubbish photo. It's a start though.