Coordinator and reporter: Nick Edwards

It was nice to see new members turning out for the nightjar’s evening: Many of them had never seen a nightjar before. The evening was cloudy with no moon, which wasn’t ideal. We waited patiently for the nightjars to begin their churring. Then, in the evening gloom, we caught sight of a
female nightjar flying around catching insects and occasionally calling. One bird nearly settled on the overhead wires. In all we had just 3 females flying over, but no males were seen, unfortunately.

Coordinator: Ray Gribble
Reporters: Kathy Blake and Steve Chapman

A group of 19 members and guests enjoyed a rewarding morning’s birding and mothing around Sparham Pools on Saturday morning. The weather was fine and bright, 18c with a light south westerly.
Land-owner, Charles Sayer, had very kindly invited us to his house and grounds where he had set up two moth traps overnight, one in the walled garden and another in the woods.
The wind felt cool at first which was probably a good thing, as when we opened the traps most of the moths were quite lethargic and this enabled close examination and identification. Charles astounded us with his knowledge of all the names of the moths, and I think most of us came away with some new names, especially the bigger ones.

Leader – Emily Leonard
Reporter – Ray Gribble
Species List – David Laurie

Fourteen WVBS members assembled at How Hill car park for a 6 mile walk around the surrounding area on public footpaths. The weather was overcast with a cool northerly breeze.
In her welcome speech Emily gave us some of the history of the site and pointed out that it was not a nature reserve, thus trying to manage our expectations of what to expect. It was totally unnecessary, as we recorded 66 species. The weather, however, had a damping effect on butterflies and dragonflies, dashing all hopes of Swallowtail butterfly which Emily had seen
during the previous week.

​Leader: Nick Edwards
Reporter: David Laurie
Photographs: Nick Edwards
Bird List: Alan Hughes

Firstly, a big thank you to Amy, our Pensthorpe guide who met 16 of us at 5:00am for our Dawn Chorus outing. It was a chilly, misty start (5°C) but with plenty of birds singing including Blackcap, Wren, Song Thrush and cawing Rooks.
In the park, were there Cattle or Little Egrets in the mist at Moon Water? Consensus was there were both. We found Little Egrets later but the Cattle Egrets had gone elsewhere, presumably in search of their favourite cattle.