July's wildlife sightings from a garden in Annan

A fairly quiet month this month in many respects - not many species of birds or moths and only 1 butterfly recorded! Despite it being time for the Big Butterfly Count (17th July - 9th August) we have been spectacularly low on butterflies - only 1 Small Tortoiseshell seen.
Moths have not been much better - we have trapped on 5 occasions this month and totals have ranged from 55 to 101 moths. July is usually the best month for numbers of moths but, as with everything else this year, not a good year at all. Only one new moth to the garden this month - called the Uncertain.

 

 

 

The most numerous moths this month were Dark Arches, Dot moth, White plume and Heart and Dart. We usually have loads of Large Yellow Underwings at this time of year too but even they are in short supply!

 

 

As we said earlier there has not been a great variety of bird species in the garden this month - mainly sparrows and starlings. We did see about 60 sparrows sat on the telegraph wire just outside our window this month. They were all wobbling together! Here is the monthly max for birds in the garden this month....

 

Blackbird -  1male, 1female 4 young 

Carrion crow -  2 adult, 2 young

Collared dove - 2

Goldfinch - 2 adult, 1 young

Great tit - 1

Greenfinch - 1

House sparrow - 60

Jackdaw - 1

Starling - 35 adult, 4 young

Swallow - 2 adult, 1 young

Swift - 20

Wood pigeon - 2

 

We have also seen 5 seven-spot ladybirds.