Bird Sightings

By Chloë Langmead 

Hello everyone, I hope you had lovely weekends :)

It’s been a busy day today! We have had the first sightings for the year of Mistle Thrush and Great Spotted Woodpecker today as well as a Reed Warbler singing in Millcombe. 

Jessie and I started our morning with a Bee Walk. However there weren’t many bumblebees to be seen, our total for the transect were 2 Common Carder and 1 Buff-tailed. In contrast, the butterflies and moths have been out and about today, Emma and Greg saw 137 Meadow Browns, 5 Ringlets, 69 Painted Ladies, a Grayling and 4 burnet moths. 

After the Bee Walk, Jessie and I headed straight down to the Landing Bay and met Tara for our snorkel safaris. We had two great sessions, during which we saw lots, including two beautiful Doto sp. sea slugs and a Boring Sponge. There were also so many Moon Jellyfish bumping about. 

After the two snorkel safari sessions we were all pretty cold, but we soon warmed up as we kayaked, paddle-boarded and swam out to deploy the BRUV. This time we repositioned and angled the BRUV so that it was closer to the ground (a temporary fix until Ian kindly permanently adjusts it for us) and we crushed the bait up a bit more before putting it in the canister. We positioned it in the seaweed and while we have yet to thoroughly review the footage to identify all the fish species, we did have our first BRUV sighting of a curious Grey Seal who came to have a nosy!