Strumpshaw Bioblitz

Last week saw a lot of specialist come to Strumpshaw to help us try to record as many species as possible.
It was good fun listing like a maniac for a week and we did various events for families and individuals alike, which saw a lot of people take a look at taxa they may not usually notice.
I will update more results as they come in but currently the list stands at a whopping 1004!
My main contributionwas the Moths of which I recorded over 200 species, with help from dad, thanks! It is a shame the nights were so clear, the final two nights had more cloud cover and the number of micros increased dramatically. A brief photo documentation of the weeks moths and others.....

Is the vole a water vole? Taken at Winterton Dunes?? 

Double Kidney

Olive

Small Red Eyed Damselfly

Candy-stripe Spider

Caspian Tern

After receiving a text and phone call on Tuesday to let me know that there was a casp present at Strumpy I was hoping that it wouldn't disappear  too early the following morning. Arriving on site earlyish I found that the bird had been present early morning but had gone toward Rockland/Buckenham. I emptied the moth trap and set to Tower Hide to try my luck.
Half way to Tower Hide I had a 2 second view through the trees of a bird that had to be the tern, I ran to the next view point and sure enough I could see the fantastic Caspian Tern fishing in front of the hide. If I were in the hide I'd have had very good views and probably some half decent photos...but I wasn't unfortunately. The bird flew back past me after a few mins, where I was able to take some record shots. Very happy to connect with such a bird on my reserve, this is my second Caspian Tern after an individual just south of Kings Lynn about 3-4 years ago. Mid Yare has got a pretty good rarity list so far this year, well for an inland site its pretty good.
Obligatory dodgy photos below- Not that I think it would pose a headache for the rarity panel!

Fonscolombii

Ruth and I finally had a chance to catch up with the red veined darters at Kelling today and we pounced on the chance given that the sun was supposed to be shining brightly.
After an hrs wait the sun came out and all of a sudden there were darters and skimmers all over the place, getting one to stay still was the tricky part. Eventually one was seen not too far away and a few dodgy snaps were taken, enough to add an overdue british ode to my list. 

A packed lunch on the shingle and a breif seawatch (not a lot going on but a good movement of Cormorants were heading West). We passed the RVD spot again and one was perching nicely which offered a better view including the blue lower eyes, the sun being in the wrong direction is my excuse for more poor shots!

On the way back we nipped briefly to Buxton Heath for the first time. What a cracking place, in need of exploring at length on the next sunny day I can spare.
I took the time to try one of my targets for this year- to start id'ing grasshoppers and crickets
Below are some of the pics taken and hopefully identified correctly. please let me know if I'm wrong, I'm not so sure about the Field Grasshoppers so could do with a point in the right direction!

Mottled Grasshopper female

Mottled Grasshopper male

Bog bush cricket

Field Grasshopper?

Field Grasshopper?

Field Grasshopper?

Check out this harrier!

Whilst out doing fen flora quadrats in the North Broads the harrier/s below flew over several times. As far as I can tell they are juvenile Marsh Harriers but why this plumage?? Never seen anything like this before so whether pure MR or hybrid theory who knows. There were at least two individuals showing the white belly which I  also find slightly bizarre.

Any ideas or anyone seen anything similar?