A flurry of moths

We headed back to the site where we saw the young kestrels a couple of weeks ago, but the nesting box was deserted. I presume they've fledged and moved into the more natural cover of the woods. One kestrel did fly overhead (as indeed did a Spitfire… it must be airshow season again), but the outstanding feature today was the countless burnet moths.

These are daytime moths which exude a toxin to deter predators. They're not the most elegant of moths in flight, despite their extremely rapid wing beat. I think these are 5-spot burnets (happy as always to be corrected).

On the garden front, the vixen is generally appearing quite late (occasionally with a cub) which has meant fewer photos, but the hedgehogs are around as is the wood mouse. The badgers have been back as well, and I've even managed another terrible photo… this time of the badger heading away from me to the back of the garden. At least this time it was moving at a sedate pace.

To make up for the near impossibility of gaining any impression of a badger from that picture, I've put together the trailcam footage from the same night (Thursday/Friday).


Nature Blog Network
Camera note: the moth shots were taken with either the EF 400mm f/5.6L USM (distant shots) or the Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG macro (close-ups), both mounted on a Manfrotto 458B Neotec tripod.

Tags: ,

This Post Has 9 Comments

  1. RobinL

    28 Jun 2009

    Very nice.

  2. gdare

    28 Jun 2009

    At least badger decided to stay around so there will be new possibilities for a good shot.

  3. Flying Red Fox Blog

    28 Jun 2009

    Nice photos, i have edited about 150 so far, usually deleting a lot of the usual aircraft shots that i take and focusing it more on the holiday ones lol. 😛

    I wonder if they have Foxes in Majorca or mainland Spain?

  4. SittingFox

    28 Jun 2009

    That badger looks like it's got a petal on its back at the beginning of the movie clip!

    Very pretty moths. I like the cinnabar moths too, but we don't see many of those these days due to the war on ragwort.

  5. Words

    28 Jun 2009

    Darko, I keep waiting outside but so far without much luck. But I'll keep trying.

  6. Words

    28 Jun 2009

    Adele, something is certainly caught on its back. A leaf seem likely. Cinnabars are beautiful, but so far I haven't seen any this year. Plenty of ragwort around though.

  7. Words

    28 Jun 2009

    Thanks Robin!

  8. Words

    28 Jun 2009

    Mark, good luck with the editing. You could be there a while. And yes they do have foxes in Spain. And books about them.

  9. Flying Red Fox Blog

    29 Jun 2009

    Oh yes thats true…… The Mask of Zorro film and Zorro is Spanish for Fox hehe. 😛

Comments are closed.

Close Menu