Studies in Greige

Picking through a lively bunch of sewage works Chiffchaffs for the Siberian version is nearly as much fun as gulls. All birders know this, so largely avoid it like the plague. Perfect. All the more for me. As mentioned here recently, my delvings into the world of tristis a few years back endeared them to me, so it was very enjoyable to spend two or three hours with the current Chiff crop at Colyton WTW yesterday. I walked away with what I thought were a few nice pics of one Sibe Chiff, but in fact I had photographed two...

Sibe Chiff #1 in warm sunshine.

#1 again, in flatter light. Those warm buff ear coverts seem to be a consistent feature in tristis.

Final shot of #1

Sibe Chiff #2 in flat light, but definitely slightly colder plumage than #1. Note warm buff ear coverts again.

#2 in flat light again. Really eye-catching compared to regular collybita birds. A proper study in greige.

#2 again

The sheer number of Chiffchaffs present here was quite a shock. The hedge was alive with them, and they were back and forth all over the works too. Absolutely impossible to count, but I would not be at all surprised to learn there were 100+ at the site. Picking out a Sibe Chiff was pot luck really, but then the challenge was to stay with it. Not easy. Anyway, between sightings I did photograph two or three collybita birds, just so I could post a few pics here for comparison. Standard Chiffchaffs are variable enough, so it's no surprise that tristis birds are too...

Regular collybita Chiff.

Different bird, very different look.

And another.

By this point I was in the mood for some gulls. Sadly they were not quite as rewarding. One Med Gull.

Keeping It Simple

With a couple of hours spare yesterday afternoon, the question was where to spend them. The dry, sunny weather almost certainly meant that the Seaton Wetlands would be too busy for my liking, so I tried something I haven't done for many years...

A stroll along the shore of the Axe Estuary almost guarantees solitude, and so it proved. Though cars passed along the elevated Axmouth Road a few yards away beyond the riverside bushes, I didn't see another soul. Perfect. My plan was to seek out colour-rings. I found four: two Black-headed Gulls, plus single Great Black-backed and Herring Gull. Unfortunately a combination of distance and glaring light made all but the latter unreadable, and even that one was hard to pin down to colour...

Red? Orange? T=Y

I wasn't expecting any noteworthy gulls other than maybe a Med Gull or two, so was pleasantly surprised to come across a really nice first-winter Caspian Gull in the last of the afternoon sunshine...

1w Caspian Gull with 1w Herring Gull. Chalk and Cheese. This Casp has beautifully plain coverts and sparsely-marked scaps. Unfortunately it didn't remain this close for long, and soon flew a fair way upriver. 

Even when partially hidden and at some range the Caspian Gull still stands out.

Yesterday's success was more than enough to make me try again this afternoon. There were far fewer gulls along the lower end of the river, but a nice bunch to pick through at Coronation Corner...

Looking upriver from the Coronation Corner viewing platform. The green-roofed building on the left is the Seaton Wetlands Tower Hide.

In December 2004 I sat more-or-less in this very spot, picking slowly through the gulls at last light in similar fashion, and found an adult Ring-billed Gull. Thankfully it appeared again for me and others the next day. The chances of repeating that trick are sadly negligible in 2025, but events like it - and countless others down the years - highlight the potential rewards to be had from a bit of effort with gulls. Who knows what delights might be tucked away in a gang like that lot in the photo above? Even without the rarity carrot, there will always be something of interest, from colour-rings to...well...all sorts...

One of just two Med Gulls.

Leucistic 1w Black-headed Gull.

With such limited scapular moult, a young Common Gull from northern latitudes maybe?

Four Brent Geese put in a brief appearance just before dusk. An unusual sight on the Axe.

Those Brent Geese remind me...

Around midday we were heading home after a Seaton seafront walk with friends, and stopped briefly to check the upper estuary marshes for some Barnacle Geese reported earlier by Steve. A bit of an Axe rarity...

13 Barnacle Geese and 5 Brents. At least the latter will be genuinely wild, and it would be nice to think the Barnies are too.

We've just had some chilly NE winds from the Continent which brought an influx of grey geese - especially White-fronts - into the country. Certainly, White-fronted or Bean Geese carry that magical whiff of wild Arctic tundra with them, but sadly I never quite get that vibe from Barnacle Geese in southern England, even when they come with the 'right' weather. Too many feral birds everywhere, including the Continent.

The view south after sunset.

So, a couple of nice afternoon walks in pleasant surroundings and total solitude, and some lovely rewards from a careful bit of gull sifting. What's not to like?

Keeping it simple. 

2025 in Moth

Unless there are any mild, calm nights forecast between now and 2026, my little trap is done for the year. So it's time for the 2025 Moth Review...

I am so glad I finally bit the bullet and started moth-trapping in 2022. It has provided a pleasing counterpoint to the increasingly depressing realities that 50+ years as a birdwatcher have made me all too aware of. I am sure the relentless birdy declines and losses that my generation has witnessed take an inevitable toll on the enthusiasm of many like me. The World of Moth is novel enough and diverse enough to rekindle it. I am well aware that mothing is just a glittery distraction, but I don't care. Long may it be so.

I shall start with the biggie. The first moth ever to have given me a dose of the shakes...

June 26th - Druid in a pot.

My trap is just a 40W actinic, and numerically its catches usually small. This moth was a nice reminder that you don't need anything special. I think there are around 20 British records. So, a pukka rarity.

Druid on a brick.

While I'm on rare migrants, here is the rarest to have graced the trap since its move to Axminster in late September...

November 14th - Banded Sable. Just 17 Devon records up to end of 2024.

The rest of this post is a mainly random collection of composite photos depicting my favourite moths of the year. Some are scarce, some common. All provided entertainment or interest or pleasure, or all three. I say 'mainly random', but the first three sets have a theme...

 

Moths in the Field

Enjoying moths in their natural habitat, as opposed to when they are attracted to light, is something I would like to do a bit more of in 2026.

An incredible encounter with a migrant Striped Hawk-moth at Cogden on May 30th.

Clockwise from top left: Pea Moth, Blackneck, Yellow Belle and Yellow Shell; all in the species-rich meadows of Cogden

Clockwise from top left: Water-dropwort Brown, Six-spot Burnet, Small Eggar, Rosy Knothorn; all at Cogden again.

All bar three of the above have never come to my garden light trap, nor are they likely to. Seeking moths in the field is a lot of fun.

 

Moths in the Garden

Clockwise from top left: Herald, Oak Beauty, Coxcomb Prominent, Mullein; none scarce, but the last two were garden firsts.

Clockwise from top left: Seraphim, Puss Moth, Alder Moth, Puss Moth again; Seraphim was new for the garden.

Clockwise from top left: Chocolate Tip, Mallow Seed Moth, Peach Blossom x2; the first two were new for the garden. Chocolate Tip was a diminutive delight, and Mallow Seed Moth (the first of two) seemingly very scarce in West Dorset.

Clockwise from top left: Maple Snout, Woundwort Pearl, Hemp Agrimony Plume, Gold-barred Marble; none common in the Bridport area.

Clockwise from top left: Bordered Straw, Scarce Light Plume, Olive Tree Pearl, Small Marbled; all migrants of varying scarcity. 2025 was an especially good year for Small Marbled, with me and many others getting their first garden records this summer; we ended up with four.

A big and spectacular bunch. Clockwise from top left: Privet Hawk-moth, Lobster Moth, Tissue, Lappet. The Lappet was an absolute beast, and probably the most impressive moth of the year. The Tissue was a garden second, following one in 2023; they appear to be the first Dorset records since 2015!

Clockwise from top left: Brown-veined Wainscot, Bulrush Wainscot, Merveille du Jour, Obscure Mompha. The wainscots were new for the Bridport garden, while Obscure Mompha was new for Devon!

Clockwise from top left: Shaded Pug, Tawny Shears, Royal Mantle, Twin-spotted Wainscot. Royal Mantle appears to be pretty rare in Dorset; this was my second, trapped in our son's Lyme Regis garden.

So that's it. 2025 saw the Bridport garden list push past 600, but here we are in Axminster now, in East Devon, starting from scratch again. When we moved in I was not optimistic about the mothy prospects. Our garden is tiny, with virtually no plants in it yet, and there are bright street lights on all night. Yet already we have had Banded Sable and a bunch of other very nice moths. 2026 beckons. Let the glittery distraction continue...

31

I cannot think of a good reason why the moth trap should be out tonight, but it is. I shall curtail this folly before bed because heavy rain is forecast. An empty trap is bad enough - and there have been a few lately - but a wet, empty trap is a pain. And anyway, despite extremely slim pickings recent catches have already exceeded expectations - three new species for the Axminster garden, including a lifer for me. I think the last time I wrote about numbers we were on 28 here. I pressed on in the hope of a Winter Moth. That duly happened when I plucked one off the trap vanes on December 6th. So, 29. A nice, round 30 would be good to finish the year on, and I wondered if Mottled Umber might be a possibility. I only ever caught a couple in Bridport, but thought it worth a try nonetheless. And then last night I caught two. Result. However, I didn't discover them until this morning, and they had already been beaten to number 30 by a lifer...

I found this beneath a window ledge late last night, but had no idea what it was.

This moth is clearly very worn, with just a few sketchy remnants of what were no doubt nice markings once. I was completely stumped. When that happens I often try ObsIdentify first. Considering the really bad phone shots I was asking it to deal with I wasn't expecting much, but hoped maybe it would point me in the right direction...

Two really bad images of my mystery moth. Surely too reflective and shiny to be of any use?

As you can imagine, I was a bit surprised by this confidence!

Obviously my next step was to get books off the shelf and check out The Brick. Not an especially common moth in Devon (just four records last year, though double figure totals normally) and not one I'd caught in Bridport. Seems to be a variable species, but I could see just enough on my knackered specimen to convince me that ObsID was correct. And thank goodness for that, because if I had been limited to books alone I am not sure I'd have nailed it. Eventually I came across an online photo that suggested what my moth would have looked like fully dressed...

Photo on the right by Tom Morris, and lifted from the Dorset Moths website.

So that was fun. And unexpected.

At least I knew what Mottled Umbers looked like, and they are rather lovely...

Mottled Umber 1

Mottled Umber 2

In the past I have written at some length about ObsIdentify and its use. Three years on, my view is pretty much the same. I see it as a handy tool to have at hand when I am stumped - or just feeling lazy - but I never trust it. Those 100% confidence IDs have occasionally been 100% wrong. And sometimes it struggles for no obvious reason. Many times though - like this time - it has solved what I thought was a tricky ID with surprising ease and accuracy.

So there we are: 31. 

Gulls & Terns

A midday visit to the Axe Estuary today produced one of the smartest Caspian Gulls I've seen for a while. Initially almost completely hidden by other gulls, a partial flush brought it right to the front. According to Google Maps, the following snaps were taken at some 146m range...

White head klaxon!

Maybe not the adjective everyone might choose to describe this bird, but that really is a lovely Casp. Large, leggy, long-billed. Lovely. It wouldn't open its wings for me, but that didn't stop me taking lots of photos, and those above provide a selection of the search images that live constantly in my head. I would be the first to admit that gulls are often subtle, but a bird like this one simply jumps out of the crowd for me these days. All I could see at first was its head waving about in the middle of the flock as it preened. But that was enough.

This was my 12th Axe Casp since moving back to East Devon a couple of months ago, following numbers 10 and 11 on Monday, December 1st...

These two blurry images are the best I managed of Casp number 10 on that Monday morning. Half the flock flushed the moment I got my camera out. It's the first-winter bird in the middle of each shot, with the black tail-band.

By the afternoon it was wet and windy, and Axe Casp number 11 was photographed in appalling light through a veil of rain...

Another first-winter bird.

Bonus Kittiwake on the river. Quite a lot rarer on the Axe than Caspian Gulls these days.

So...terns...

Monday, December 1st was notable not just for its provision of another two Axe Estuary Caspian Gulls. Roughly 90 minutes after I photographed that Kittiwake, a bright-billed tern sp. flew down the valley with a mass of pre-roost gulls, slipping through the fingers of its sole observer who was positioned across the river from the spot I had vacated a little earlier [slightly more details on Steve's blog here]. Two days later a Lesser Crested Tern was discovered on the Exe Estuary, around 18 miles to the west. Apparently the first in Britain for a couple of decades, this Lesser Crested Tern has stuck around and become a bird that it would be rude not to pop in and catch up with, or something like that.

I guess I am rude.

The idea of travelling to Dawlish or Cockwood or Turf Lock to see this bird appeals about as much as a poke in the eye. If it was on the Axe...well, I would be a lot more polite. But don't ask me why, because I can't really articulate it beyond saying that at least it would 'mean something', whatever that means.

It was not always so...

August 1983. The date is lost in the mists of time, but I know it was a weekday. At some unhealthy pre-dawn hour I am trudging through shingle with many other hopefuls, aiming for Blakeney Point. There is a lot of heavy breathing and no talk. We arrive. There, among a cluster of Sandwich Terns, is an orange-billed tern. Memory tells me it was supposed to be a Royal Tern. It was nice. We trudged back, climbed into cars and returned to real life.

A few days later it was the weekend. I went again, this time with Sandra and our eight-month-old son, Rob. I carried our offspring in a primitive baby-carrier back-pack thing. It had webbing straps which morphed into piano wire after about two miles of shingle. It was agony. The bird wasn't seen all day. Annoyingly it was by now a Lesser Crested Tern. Crossing out 'Royal Tern' had spoiled my notebook...

It all seemed so important back then.