Sunday 24 April 2016

2015 Round-up

I can't say that 2015 has been the best year in my short mothing career; the garden catch was well down on the previous year numbers-wise, albeit with a handful more species. Two of these, though, were lifers in the form of Tachystola acroxantha and Slender Pug.

I concentrated my trapping at the Chiltern Open Air Museum this year, in conjunction with two others. Over two years, the site list stands at 402 species. I did track down 2 sets of records for the site from the mid-1990s, but there was nothing on the list that we haven't seen since. 15 species were lifers, although all micros identified through dissection. I was pleased at the end of the year to catch a Merville du Jour on the site, only the second on my life-list!


At my other regular site at the Chiltern Woodland Burial Park we run a 6W heath trap for the GMS scheme. Sadly, it has not been possible to run any other traps during the year, which means the year-on-year list is down somewhat, although it was nice to continue to see Red-necked Footman, and to add Red Chestnut and Grey Shoulder-knot to my life list (the latter was attracted to a window rather than the trap!).



The rest of my moth sightings resulted from attending trapping events run my the Buckinghamshire Invertebrate Group, which is a great way of meeting other moth-ers and getting access to interesting sites! Stoke Common (a rare bit of heathland in South Bucks) was most productive as far as the life-list is concerned, with Grass Wave, Pale-shouldered Brocade and Common Heath as far as macros are concerned.