Tom Lowe

@saloplarus.bsky.social

1369 Followers 701 Following

Gulls, Geese, Goshawks, Aurora, Astronomy and everything else in the sky. #lookup #salopobs - the unofficial bird observatory in the heart of Shropshire 😏

Box fresh juvenile Icelandic Black-tailed Godwit
Male Vestal on the wall
Ear Moth of some sort in an egg box
Arctic Skua heading south distantly over a grey sea
Whimbrel flyby
Small Mottled Willow and out of focus Common Wainscot (one of 66) on an egg box
Adult Spotted Flycatcher on the paddock fence
Black Rhino blending in with a wall, sort of
Lesser Wax Moth and friends
Adult Cattle Egret in remnants of breeding plumage up a tree
Ni Moth clinging to the mothtrap cable
Screenshot of a beautiful Cormorant ID plate from The Sound Approach
5 Continental Cormorants (sinensis)
Small Ranunculus aglow on the side of the house
Smart Pine Hawkmoth on a wooden chair
Montage of phonescoped videograbs of a smart juv Yellow-legged Gull
Poplar Hawk on a child's face
Pine Hawkmoth, now verging on regular enough to join the prestigious list of hawkmoths on children's noses
Male Small Red-eyed Damselfly resting on a lily pad
Screenshot someone shared off twitter
Female Clouded Yellow feeding on lucerne
Canary-shouldered Thorn reflecting on the mothtrap
Ni Moth on my finger, the third this year (and ever) for the garden, and likely the 4th for the county
Downed Common Swift lying on a gravel track
Screenshot of one of my many Merlin sound recordings of singing Quail at work this week. Didn't see one
Small Mottled Willow, a migrant moth that is currently exploding
The Milky Way stretching down over the wood and a wheat field
Shark, latched on to my thumb
Twin-spotted Wainscot, first for the garden and possibly third for Shropshire following records in 2021 and 1977, a long way from its southern reedy haunts
Stoat running, twisting and leaping around the crispy garden
Wisps of bluish-white 50 mile high noctilucent clouds above the rooftops
Fine silvery wisps of noctilucent clouds in the colourful glow of the approaching dawn
Almost silhouetted against the setting sun, a mother Shoveler and her 7 ducklings/shovelings?!
Pine Hawkmoth, losing its hair
A page from the children's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Dusky Sallow
Marbled White butterfly
One of 827 Swifts that flew over me in the sunny Lincolnshire arable today
Full parhelic circle wrapped around the zenith above a bright solar halo. Not something I've seen very often
Lesser Black-backed Gull chick looking on in disgust as its parent drinks from a gutter
Screenshot of a dispersing Marsh Tit map from Richard Broughton's book
An electric blue band of fine waves and whorls as the evening's noctilucent clouds started to ebb away at midnight
Noctilucent clouds, made of ice crystals formed around meteor dust 50 miles up in the atmosphere
Electric blue white noctilucent clouds shining high behind the tropospheric clouds in the north
Wispy electric blue noctilucent clouds amongst the warm twilight tones, taken from the back garden at 2355
Massive cumulonimbus anvil in a blue sky
Two Leopard Moths, exactly as found on the sheet by the mothtrap
Kestrel chick in its nest in a broken tree trunk (bottom right of the hole, facing left... squint maybe, turn your head to one side?)
Clockwise from top left: Dog's Tooth, Buff-tip, Drinker, Common Emerald, Herald, Scarlet Tiger, Elephant Hawk, Barred Yellow, Buff Arches, Spectacle, Swallow-tailed Moths(2!), and the ever awesome Leopard
V-Moth, a rapidly declining Red List species that we haven't recorded before
Bullish Veneer (Calamotropha paludella)
A pair of Hares making shadows on the drive
High noon sun with a solar halo over the salopobs garden
Pine Hawkmoth on the windowsill
Male Continental Black-tailed Godwit
The crescent Moon and Venus in conjunction over an English street as a couple of England fans stroll home
Silver Y moth busily feeding on Red Valerian flowers
Sainfoin
Leveret digesting at the foot of the climbing frame
A friendly pug on a finger