Not to be sneezed at.

Alan and myself hosted the Oxford Ornithological Society display at the Oxford Festival of Nature held at Botley today. We spent an afternoon in the very hot conditions made more bearable by the loan of a gazebo from the BBOWT stand next to us, this was an act of considerable kindness for which we are most grateful.
On packing up our display boards at about 5.00pm I noticed a moth on the back of one of the boards that turned out to be a Peppered Moth and although I had narrowed the identification down to four possibilities including Peppered it proved to me once again just how ambiguous the colouring, marking and identification of moths is.
We had the good fortune to meet many interesting and interested people from locals to visitors from across the globe most of them like ourselves concerned for the perilous state a world with a dangerously expanding population is heading for.
Yesterday a walk round a Bampton farm that I hadn't been on before gave me a far distant photo of a female Sparrowhawk and several Butterflies including Small Tortoiseshell and Marbled White, a rather long - eared half asleep Hare I found quite entertaining but the bites from Horse Flies were most uncomfortable and are still itchily irritating and most certainly not in the least bit entertaining.
camboy.

                                            Peppered Moth

                                              Hare

   

                                              Small Tortoiseshell       

                                            Female Sparrowhawk

                                           Marbled White

                                            Spotted Flycatcher near Waylands Smithy on the ridgeway