Today I was conducting Norfolk Symphony Orchestra in King’s Lynn, with a morning rehearsal and an afternoon concert: Very enjoyable, but the nearest I got to wildlife was a handful of birds, including several red-legged partridges, on the drive to the concert venue….plus the clarinet and piccolo imitating gulls in an overture by Carl Nielsen!
Brenda writes: “I’m finally beginning to catch up, but it will be slow and steady for a while – hare and tortoise.
I had one new flower and one new moth today. As I was making my way to Burnham Sutton Church this morning I saw on of my favourite flowers, ivy-leaved toadflax. There are several members of the toadflax family, all very different except that they all have the “snapdragon” flower. Ivy-leaved is nearly always found scrambling over walls and this cluster was on the the south side of the flint churchyard wall.
In the moth trap today were five moths, all different – Hebrew character, clouded drab, common quaker, small quaker and (a new one) shoulder stripe. Yesterday I didn’t manage a decent photo of the small quaker. The problem is that if you take them out of the moth pot they tend to fly away – and who can blame them! Today the common quaker and small quaker were very obliging and I managed to get a shot of them side by side (a chance to compare both their markings and size).
The shoulder stripe, on the other hand, promptly headed for the window. I managed a snap of it after opening the window before it fluttered off to freedom.”
New species for March 19th:
Moths: shoulder stripe
Flowers: ivy-leaved toadflax
TOTALS TO DATE:
Birds = 147
Moths = 13
Wildflowers = 25