Wildlife

James Lowen

The Scrape was full of life - and where there is life, there is death too. This Lesser Black-backed Gull had nabbed a Common Tern chick. After lubricating its prey with Scrape water, gull swallowed tern in a single gulp...

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23 June 2025 Mates' Minsmere

In mid-June, I spent a couple of days around Minsmere, Dunwich and Westleton in Suffolk, in the company of old friends Guy Dutson (over from Oz), Stu Butchart, Durwyn Liley, John Pilgrim and Tom Evans. Some of my favourite people in one of my favourite parts of Britain. We birded and bugged our way around shingle, marsh, heath and wood while nattering and reminiscing. We ran several moth traps on two nights, one in Eastbridge (when thunderstorms ruined life for all but the single trap under shelter) and one, with permission, in the western part of RSPB Minsmere. The birding was fun, with Stone Curlews, Dartford Warblers, Nightjars and Roseate Tern the highlights. (Sadly we weren't at the Scrape when the Bridled Tern called in - most infuriating for those in the team who were walking back to the car park/accommodation at the time.) Mothwise, a Glyphipterix thrasonella was new for me on the first night (and we had one on the second night too), while notable species on the second night included a few Obscure Wainscot (a long-overdue tick), a sumptuous Tawny Wave, a few Lunar Yellow Underwings, Water Ermine and Phyllonorycter ulicolella (beside a gorse bush: another new species for me). The highlight, however, was Cydia illutana (Larch Cone Moth), trapped beneath a larch. Formal acceptability as Suffolk's third (and East Anglia's fourth) record of this candidate Red Data Book species is presumably contingent on confirmation by gen. det. - but the proximity to the food plant makes me supremely confident that our ID is correct. Here are some pics.