The Closing Stages

I need to take any oppurtunity to trap at the moment, so a cloudy night was enough to stick the light on, despite the temp being around 11 only.  That considered, it was not a bad haul, and it included two year ticks.  Just two more to go to get to 200! 

21st September:
16 Large Yellow Underwing
6 Common Marbled Carpet
3 Lesser Yellow Underwing
2 Large Ranunculus NFY
1 Light Emerald
1 Silver Y
1 Sallow NFY
1 Lunar Underwing
1 Rosy Rustic
1 Square-spot Rustic
1 Burnished Brass
1 Setaceous Hebrew Character
1 Grey Pine Carpet

Large Ranunculus

Sallow

Autumnal Fant-Rustic!

I have hardly trapped at all this autumn. We had a couple of warm nights a fortnight ago, but due to various reasons, I could not trap, which was rather frustrating. I managed to trap once last week, but the result was fairly poor, with just one true autumn species, a Lunar Underwing. However, with the weather taking a turn for the warm, I trapped last night and it was a brilliant haul. I got almost all the autumnal species I expect to get during the period in one go! Best was a brand new species to me, of a gorgeous Autumnal Rustic, which was much smaller than I expected.

September 26th:

12 Large Yellow Underwing

5 Lunar Underwing

3 Snout

3 Common Marbled Carpet

3 Svennson's Copper Underwing

3 Copper Underwing

2 Large Ranunculus NFY

1 Brimstone

1 Square-spot Rustic

1 Grey Pine Carpet

1 Spruce Carpet

1 Oak Nycteoline

1 Setaceous Hebrew Character

1 Pink-barred Sallow NFY

1 Black Rustic NFY

1 Barred Sallow NFY

1 Brindled Green NFY

1 Autumnal Rustic NFG

Pink-barred Sallow

Lunar Underwings (variation)

Large Ranunculus

Brindled Green

Black Rustic

Barred Sallow

Autumnal Rustic

Autumn moths at thier height

The weather seemed pretty perfect last night, and I managed a good catch, in fact probably the best I can possibly get at this time of year with my equipment. Amongst a haul of 18 moths of 11 species were a few new for the year.
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7th October:
5 Large Yellow Underwing
2 Large Ranunculus NFY
2 Black Rustic NFY
2 Red-line Quaker NFY
1 Yellow-line Quaker NFY
1 Pine Carpet
1 Dark Sword-grass NFY
1 Barred Sallow
1 Common Marbled Carpet
1 Turnip
1 Setaceous Hebrew Character
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Large Ranunculus

Dark Sword-grass

Black RusticYellow-line and Red-line Quakers

Large Ranunculus- NE Surrey

I've been having a poor few weeks trapping wise... with only one moth caught, a Willow Beauty. Last night thought, an extremely late Least Carpet flew into the kitchen. It was a pretty weird occurance, as this is a moth I'd expect in mid-summer, so I didn't quite know what to think of it at first! I've sent the record to the CR, you never know... could be the latest record of the species for Surrey.

This morning, whilst relaxing at home (the beauty of free periods at college!!), I also found my second Large Rancunculus for the garden, and for the year, resting on a wall. It flew off when I got too close and I thought I wasn't going to get photo (the last one I caught also flew off before I could get a shot), but luckily it landed perfectly on a plant.

Large Ranunculus...

I always enjoy finding butterflies in autumn, reminds me of summer! This Small White was sunning itself in the garden yesterday, during a rare occurance of sunshine...

Happy Mothing,

Bill