We're going back to Mongolia in August!

Can

Not

Wait

wildlife-travel.co.uk/asia-and-pacif…

one last morning moth session with the #MothWhisperer James Lowen & Mark Hows

amongst the goodies today

The Passenger (a near cousin of our earlier Geometrician)

Euchromius superbellus

& the lovely emerald Proteuchloris neriaria

#MothsMatter #WildlifeTravelling #Lesvos

a close run thing... I do love a good form

a day of all the beasts on the sunny #Lesvos hillsides around Molyvos...

the much-admired, thread-tailed Neuroptera sinuata

Eresus walckenaeri, a chewy ladybird spider

Grand Antlion again

and the pitch black Dasypogon diadema, a contender for next year's #WorldRobberFlyDay

Some more goodies, thanks to the moth trapping efforts of James Lowen and Mark Hows, introducing another group of Wildlife Travellers (and half the other hotel guests) to the wonderful world of moths each morning

Wildlife Travel #MothsMatter #WildlifeTravelling

and is there anything more perfect than Iris orientalis?

#WildlifeTravelling #Lesvos

some days, everything just works out perfectly

today we enjoyed Olive-tree Warblers & Masked Shrikes in the olive groves, a trio of Little Bitterns at Metochi, all 3 marsh terns on the salt pans, a quartet of elegant Collared Pratincoles & a Little Crake at Alykes

#LesvosBirds

starting our day off with a lesson in #BatesianMimicry ...

Dasylabris sp, a velvet ant with a 'painful wallop' of a sting (according to Natural History Museum no less)

and Clerus mutillarius, a similarly garbed, but entirely stingless beetle

#WildlifeTravelling

nhm.ac.uk/discover/velve…

out west for a day of buntings & butterflies, wheatears & weather

6+ singing Cinereous Buntings the stars along w/ 6 Black-headed, 3 Cretzschmar's and 3 Cirl Bunts, 3 spp of wheatear, Eastern Orphean Warbler

Balkan Marbled White, Turkish and Aegean Meadow Browns

#LesvosBirds

some of the goodies from last night's moth trapping haul in #Lesvos , thanks to James Lowen

Pale Shoulder

Coral-bordered Wave

Lace Border

and Great Silver Water Beetle

#MothsMatter

afternoon down amongst the marshes nr Mesa, where a Bittern slunk through the rushes, & this handsome Red-backed Shrike posed nicely

super-abundant Dark Spreadwing, loads of trackside Holy Orchid & 9 Black Storks grounded nearby

#LesvosBirds #WildlifeTravelling Wildlife Travel

up into the chestnut forests for lunch, surrounded by orchids, anemones and tulips and this very smart, freshly emerged Eastern Festoon

#WildlifeTravelling in #Lesvos with James Lowen and Wildlife Travel

#IntoTheWoods ...

First stop of the day, the pine forests at Mikri Limni, where Krüper's Nuthatch performed nicely for us, a big relief after last year's blank.

Also Green and Ilex Hairstreak, Wild Gladiolus, Whinchat and E Subalpine Warbler

#WildlifeTravelling #LesvosBirds

a day ambling out from our hotel, with the burbling of Bee-eaters in our ears all day

male Red-footed Falcon, 4+ Black Storks & 10+ Black-headed Buntings were #LesvosBirds highlights around Skala Kallonis, along w/ The Geometrician, Holy Orchid & loads of Mammoth Wasps

getting our week in #Lesvos off to a grand start, with a long overdue Great Snipe ✓

some kleptocrats for #WorldRobberflyDay

a glossy black thief from #Guadalcanal

a flashy red-thighed highwayman from #Asturias

Dioctria rufipes on a Norfolk heath

and a pair of smokey robbers in #Mongolia , doing their very best to make sure there's a future #WorldRobberflyDay

somehow I've managed to book myself into a camp site that has both Amami Rabbit and Amami Woodcock in the grounds, as well as Amami Robins and Lidth's Jay before dark and a sounder of Ryukyu Wild Boar and two Northern Boobook at dusk...

#Amami #MammalWatching #FabRabbit

my first lie-in since leaving home

'finished' the spoonbills with 13 typically-sleepy Black-faced Spoonbills looking rather incongruous on a small roadside pool in Naha city (spot the one taller Eurasian)

and now waiting to jump north up the Ryukyu chain for 24 hours in Amami