Simon's life "begins" and moths get autumnal

September 11th is a big day for Simon, but 11/9/10 was a particularly big one - 40! Duly celebrated with a Hampshire first at dawn in Gosport (an excellent female Daurian Shrike), and more traditionally with a slap up lunch and an amazing Julia-made carrot cake, and followed up with a beautiful walk in Redshoot Wood, complete with Ceps and Shaggy Inkcaps, which got eaten for tea! Yum....

A Green Sandpiper over the garden was the "megafauna" highlight, but some good moth traps in recent days have turned up lots of new species for the garden, and several lifers for us both:

Dusky Thorn

The Sallow

Red Underwing


Frosted Orange

Oak Lutestring


Feathered Gothic


Centre-barred Sallow


Bulrush Wainscot


Autumnal Rustic

More rendered unto Caesar (thanks for that, Dad....)

Rendering now complete! Simon also repaired the coping (more Y-chromosome DIY talk there) on the patio wall, and repointed (see?) the brickwork where necessary. Actually not that hard...I mean, very manly and difficult work. Thompson's Waterseal applied Sunday morning ready for masonry paint whenever.

Simon coping rather well

Biodiversity - moth sugaring attempted on the field fenceposts last night for the first time - lots of moths just an hour after dark, none of them new or very spectacular, but at least a proof of principle! Also some delicious Parasol mushrooms picked and cooked from near Rockford Lake. Yum. Let's hope they were Parasols, and I'm still here to blog tomorrow....

Postscript - see this page to see what the Parasols looked like. Just don't tell Bob I ate some of them.....

Another garden tick "rendered"

The autumn continues to turn up new birds - a Green Sandpiper overhead, and both Yellow and Grey Wagtails likewise - odd we hadn't had one of the latter before, really. Also a Pygmy Shrew rescued from the jaws of death - well, Elli the Cat.

On the DIY front, manliness is to the fore, as Simon has been stripping exterior paint and even doing a spot of re-rendering and pebbledashing. Grrrrr!