February Firsts

The warm and sunny period at the end of February brought about a rush of firsts of the year in my part of Hook Norton.

First moth:  Spring Usher. 

A new species for me, bringing my Hook Norton total since 2016 up to 243 species.   Last year we had 151 species, and in 2017 150 species, but with a lot of differences within those totals.
First butterfly: Brimstone
First hoverfly: Eupeodes luniger (on crocuses)

First bats: Common pipistrelle, (according to my Echometer Touch2) though the echolocation calls were atypical.  A spectrogram from February is compared below to one from October for a Common pipistrelle.  The former might in fact be a Soprano pipistrelle, but even then the spectrogram is odd with a bimodal pattern (at 50 kHz and 25kHz).  Maybe this has something to do with emerging from hibernation but I have to admit that I am baffled, and I did think it would be easy!

 

 Common pipistrelle? (Feb)    Definite Common Pipistrelle (Oct)