Help!

A nice haul of 7 Spring Usher, 2 Pale Brindled Beauty and 1 possible March Moth this morning.  And these two....anyone care to take a punt on an ID?  I think the first may be a Small Brindled Beauty but the second one I have no idea.....the markings just don't look right for Small Brindled Beauty.  Help!

The new girl on the blog...

I was very flattered to have been asked to join the blogging team here at Surrey Moths.  I am very much a newbie to mothing having only been running a trap since last August.  Indeed, prior to last August, I had absolutely no knowledge of moths whatsoever and certainly no idea moths could be quite so fascinating!  

So here we are in 2012 and already the mothing world is being turned upside down, or slightly sideways at least, by the early emergence of some species.  Even here in deepest Wimbledon, where moths have not been as numerous as they might be, I am getting a few out of season flyers.  The tally so far this year is:-

2 Chestnut
4 Spring Usher
2 Mottled Umber
1 Pale Brindled Beauty

Then the fun ones......

1 Hebrew Character

 1 Red-green Carpet

 

Please excuse the rubbish photograph but this one that I thought was quiet after a night in the fridge flew before I could get a decent shot!  I still have a lot to learn when it comes to photographing moths!

Late news

I've had some records back from 2011 as I saved some specimens for dissection, which Graham has kindly now done. By coincidence, I had two new garden ticks, both on the same day in May.

One, cream wave, was in a bad way when I found it - not worth a photo. The other was a micro which is one of the hard-to-ID Scoparia species, in this case basistragalis.

Spring Ushered?

If only, but it was a great start to my garden trapping year in the garden. This will be the first year I attempt to use the MV trap regularly in the garden, that's until the neighbours complain!

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Never having trapped in the winter before, I was hoping of at least a garden tick of Winter Moth. None of those amazingly, but I did get that garden tick in the form of a Spring Usher, but despite getting an early Common Quaker as well, I wouldn't regard it as a sign of spring just yet!

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9th January:

2 Chestnut

1 Common Quaker

1 Spring Usher NFG

1 Pale Brindled Beauty

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Spring Usher

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Pale Brindled Beauty