February Week Two

Week 2

Apion cf. frumentarium


Week 2 was rather uneventful in the way of rare birds, with 4 (2 successful) outings for some slightly unusual birds. The Valentine’s Day outing to search for dippers in Exeter was predictably a fail, although Kiera added green woodpecker to her yearlist at ludwell valley park and we saw a water rail and grey wagtail.


Searching for Yellowhammer in Brixham


Broadsands provided us with unfortunately very brief, but decent scope views of a female brambling which was a lifer for Kiera and my first in 3 years. It certainly wasn’t easy to pick out amongst 100-200 chaffinches!

Broadsands, Feb 12th

Plus one other trip to Dartington & Totnes got us a couple of oddities.

(Will switch out BOC’s when I can get pics off camera)

Mandarin at Dartington, Feb 8th

Green Sandpiper at Dartington, Feb 8th



Bird highlights of the week - brambling, green sandpiper, mandarin duck, razorbill, cirl bunting, skylark, water rail, firecrest, siskin, bullfinch, cetti’s warbler, & great northern diver.

Lesser Black-backed Gull (?) at Broadsands, Feb 12th


Other wildlife - a stunning red weevil and an always cool water boatman were nice on the insect front, plus one or two other more regular additions to the yearlist

Peppered Backswimmer
(Notonecta maculata)


Bird Yearlist - 127
Animal Yearlist - 176


Girdled Snail (Hygromia cinctella)

Stripe-backed Brusheye
(Dasysyrphus albostriatus)


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