Guernsey

We're almost into April and this means a potential stalling of the 1KSQ list. We are now well into bird migration time, so when I have a couple of hours spare, I am less likely to trawl the lanes around home but will be drawn to the coast to search for rarities. This morning I have a few free hours but I'm gonna hit the cliffs and look for rares.

Eristalis pertinax - a brief sunny period brought one or two insects to the garden.

I have managed a couple of walks in the last week and have found a few new little spots which look good (albeit private). Best bird was a Firecrest feeding in a garden along the road. It's a species which I should have seen in the square before but I haven't previously walked around it a lot. One night seemed fine enough to put the moth trap out which seemed a bit pointless as the temp dropped, but in the morning there was an Oak Beauty sat on the side which was a new species for the garden list - one of only 5 individual moths though.

Oak Beauty

The other night I spent a few frustrating hours with a beetle and my new carabid beetle book. I took me quite a while to understand and get used to the key and at various points decided to give up, but in the end I managed to identify the beast as Amara lunicollis. (I won't post a photo because if someone says I got it wrong it might make me cry!)

273 - Marchantia polymorpha (Common Liverwort)
274 - Cochlicella acuta (snail)
275 - Netted Slug
276 - Firecrest
277 - Sheep's Sorrel
278 - Sun Spurge
279 - Squirrel-tail Fescue
280 - Oak Beauty
281 - Common Quaker
282 - Amara lunicollis (beetle)

Found some of these scale insects on Polypody along the roadside near home. It looks like pictures of Soft Brown Scale but I presume there are a few similar species.

I was looking at some old local maps and found one from 1787 which shows that the northern part of my square used to be saltmarsh!