It's Been A While...

...since I last saw any moths, but after a slightly milder night, a regular actinic light placed in a local managed woodland produced a couple of December Moths and an Acleris sparsana.

Also on the site were a brace of Mottled Umber, a Scarce Umber and a pair of Winter Moths.

I am trapping for the Winter Garden Moth Scheme, both at home and at the above site, and these were the first moths I can report during the season. Last year (garden only) I had a total of 9 moths during the whole 16 weeks; currently I'm not holding my breath for anything better but let's see shall we!

December Moth

Quiet October

October has been very quiet on the moth front. This is partly because I was out of the country for two weeks (I did see a few moths, but nothing too spectacular) and because of the deteriorating weather, I have only run the trap 4 times during the rest of the month.

The only new moths for the year during these sessions has been the aggregate November Moth and a brace of Yellow-line Quakers.

My regular woodland site hasn't been much better, although there have been some new species for my year list and one new for the site:

Blair's Shoulder-knot
Feathered Thorn
Sprawler
Chestnut
Agonopterix arenella

Feathered Thorn

Better Autumnal moths

The MV light and reasonably mild nights have continued to pay dividends with some more nice autumn moths in my garden.

Continuing large numbers of Large Yellow Underwing (up to 29) and Lunar Underwing (up to 16) have made the overall numbers quite high (up to 103) , although the maximum number of species has been 19.

New for the year list in my garden have been:

Rush Veneer
Figure of Eight (I did have a caterpillar in the spring)
Large Ranunculus
Brown-spot Pinion (all-time garden first)
Beaded Chestnut

Brown-spot Pinion

Also trapping in my favourite woodland spot only produced three moths this week (it was the coldest night), but at least this list included

Sallow (new for year)
Pink-barred Sallow (only my 2nd ever)

Pink-barred Sallow

More interesting moths...

Continuing with my nightly MV sessions, I am getting to see more interesting moths in my garden trap. After sifting through the large numbers of Large Yellow and Lunar Underwings, and avoiding the (luckily fairly passive) Hornets, I have had three more year-firsts, one of which is an all-time garden first.

Barred Sallow
Deep-brown Dart (new for garden)

Blair's Shoulder-knot

It was also nice to receive a brief visit from a migrant Silver Y.

Barred Sallow

Blair's Shoulder-knot

Deep-brown Dart

Lifer!

I ran the MV light again for a couple of hours in the early evening, with the actinic left on for the rest of the night, to take advantage of the warmer weather.

Although my catch was lower than the previous night, mainly comprising Large Yellow Underwings and Lunar Underwings, I was very pleased to find my first garden Red-Green Carpet for this year, and more importantly an unusual moth which took me a while to id, and which turned out to be a lifer Oak Lutestring.

Oak Lutestring

Some warmer weather!

This weekend the temperature has risen by around 5C and there is no rain, so after a quiet week, we ran an evening MV in a local woodland, and I ran an evening MV in my garden. The garden session (same length of time) produced quite a few more moths than the woodland, which is odd, but it was nice to be able to count into double figures again!

The woodland session produced only singles of 10 species (apart from 2 Light Emerald). Nothing desperately unusual arrived, but a lifer for me was Pink-barred Sallow and new for the year was Acleris emargana and the first Red-Green Carpet of the season.

The general picture in the garden over the last week has been small numbers of Large Yellow Underwing and Lunar Underwing, with a smattering of Lesser Yellow Underwing.

The MV session, though, produced 51 moths of 18 species, with the highlights being a garden-first Acleris emargana and late (or new generation?) examples of Barred Hook-tip (last 21st Aug), Small Blood-vein (last 1st Aug) and Small Dusty Wave (last 31st Jul).

Acleris emargana

Autumn is with us!

Autumn is with us, and this has meant a huge reduction in the numbers of moths I'm seeing. It is noticably colder at night, and the amount of rain seems to have dramatically increased as well, so the trap has (apart from large numbers of Large Yellow Underwing) been catching very few moths.

I did have one micro lifer, in the form of Ypsolopha sylvella which was nice, a new one for the all-time garden list with Blood-vein and a couple for the garden year list with Hypatima rhomboidella and Eudonia angustea.

Blood-vein

The regular weekly woodland trap has been running as well, with new species for the site being Anacampsis populella, Agonopterix arenella, Light Brown Apple Moth and Snout, plus new for my overall year list Frosted Orange.

Frosted Orange