The first moth of the year appeared next to the trap on Sunday morning-it's a start. On Sunday I had a fairly distant view of a Short-eared Owl behind the Oyster Farm at Reculver and the Barn Owl showed well at Reculver late afternoon the same day.

Mottled Umber

I had very good day in the Dungeness/E. Sussex border area today. At the ARC there was a Bittern in front of the Hanson Hide glimpsed from behind the only glass window but unfortunately it flew when the I gingerly opened the first hatch. A Great White Egret was also there. The Ring-necked Duck was in the usual place. We failed with the Stonechat, and there was little at the Patch, but a 2nd Winter Caspian Gull showed well near the Fish Hut. Two Slavonian Grebes were on the New Diggings and after lunch at the back of Scotney Farm there was a Black-necked Grebe on the pit east of the track. Further along a Buzzard was noted and to the west of the pits a Ringtail Hen Harrier showed well. Finally, we headed off to Pett Level via Camber. The Red-necked Grebe showed well on the pool just past the village, but seemed not to be there when I returned on the way back. At Pett Level the 5 Taiga Bean Geese and 4 Pink-footed Geese where with numerous Greylags, Canadas, and 5 (presumably feral?) Barnacle Geese. With Little Grebes and Great Crested Grebes at Scotney and elsewhere that meant we'd manged to see 5 species of Grebe in a day.

Red-necked Grebe

Looking back over the year the following were the highlights:

1.The best of my garden moths wete 5 Convolvulus Hawk-moths recorded in September. Finally getting round to palnting the free packet of Nicotiana seeds from Atropos magazine paid off spectacularly.

2. The Great Grey Owl I photographed near Calgary was the bird of the year. I'd been trying to get good pictures of this species for a few years. This one seemed oblivious to a few photographers and caught 3 voles while we watched.

3. My Kent bird of the year was the Hobby which gave very close views on the ARC pit track at Dungeness on a miserable spring day.

 Great Grey Owl

 Hobby

 Convolvulus Hawk-moth

With -3c in the garden last night I think the mothtrapping year is over now. 2016 has been my best year in terms of the number of species recorded by a fair distance and the first time I've recorded over 300 species in the year. The 318 total included 6 new macro and 16 new micro species for the garden list.  The 2 most obvious factors involved here are probably: 1. Using a 40W actinic trap instead of the 6W model I've used for the past 16 years. 2. The fine weather this summer from mid July until well into September. The table below summarises my moth numbers from 2010 and although not strictly comparable it still reveals somthing interesting. Despite a record number of species the total moths trapped still didn't reach the numbers achieved in the smaller actinic trap in 2010 and 2011.

	2010	2010	2011	2011	2012	2012	2013	2013	2014	2014	2015	2015	2016	2016
	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.
Macro Moths	5090	180	4833	187	2972	160	2719	160	2273	164	3515	186	4469	201
Micro Moths	1310	86	1215	96	1348	97	945	96	929	106	1006	108	1494	117
Total	6400	266	6048	283	4320	257	3664	256	3202	270	4521	294	5963	318

Unusually we chose the right day to visit Dunge this week where the sun shone on a calm day. However we only managed to tick off the usual suspects. On the ARC pit there was a Great White Egret and a Marsh Harrier. At the Fishing Boats, among the many Guillemots spread out over the calm sea, we noted 4 Razorbills and 4 Red-throated Divers. A Caspian Gull was feeding on fish scraps near the Fish Hut. After lunch on the reserve the Ring-necked Duck was still present near Boulderwall, 2 further Caspian Gulls and 2 Smew were on Burrows and another Great White Egret was on Dengemarsh.

Caspian Gull (1st W)

 Smew

 Little Grebe

Another relatively mild night meant my first Winter Moth of the year appeared.

 Winter Moth

Visited Dungeness on Monday this week but a gloomy day became wet in the afternoon and it was mostly a case of seeing the usual suspects. Milder nights however, have produced a couple of December Moths this week along with the ever present Light Brown Apple Moths.

December Moth