While on a wander around Farlington on the sea wall today I was interrupted by a fluttering white moth crossing my path. Anyone that has read my previous posts on this blog will know that Ive been spending this year to learn as much as possible about moths, so I take interest in anything that flaps past in a moth like fashion. Its mostly common stuff or little micro-moths I’ve got no idea about but on this occasion I knew what it was straight away and it was interesting.
Palpita vitrealis
The Palpita vitrealis is a migrant to our southern shores from continental Europe. Being a migrant that doesn’t breed in this country I count it as a proper migrant rather than something that drops into England for the summer and can breed, like a Clouded Yellow butterfly or a Vestal Moth. Its a very pretty little moth that has translucent wings with a pearlescent sheen, although this was hard to photograph on an overcast morning. I would have been very happy to find it in a moth trap let alone just bump into it on a walk.
I luckily timed my walk around near high tide and there were plenty of waders and ducks on the lake. The Brent geese are getting ever closer to the marsh, bobbing about just a few metres from the sea wall. It can only be a matter of a week or two until they start grazing the grasslands, football pitches and parks around the harbour.
Following on from yesterdays blog post, if you would like to play the ‘count the cows’ game the numbers are as follows….
– 25 in the Bushes
– 12 in West mudlands (behind the building)
– 7 North of the A27.
Please let me know if you see anything different – Thanks.
Rob
Solent Reserves Blog 
A cracking photo of the P. vitralis, much better than mine!
What’s happened to this blog, really miss the information that Bob used to post. Not able to get to the eastern Solent as often as I might but enjoyed reading and seeing what was going on. Please male regular post again.
Sorry twilks, its been a busy few weeks on the reserves. With Bob gone to over to the west of the county its just been the volunteers and myself carrying out all the management work. Hopefully I’ll find the time to post more frequently about the interesting things I see.
I could only spot 11 cows behind the building this morning…
Thanks for looking in on the cows Amy. There are indeed only 11 cows behind the building now after one wanted to join its friends in the bushes. So at the moment there are 11 behind the building and 26 in the bushes.