The well named Carpet...

For mid-May, the total of fifteen moths last night was very poor, but this did include two new species for the garden.  In slightly showery conditions, the best moth was sadly dead in a nearby spiders web, but it was the very aptly named Water Carpet.  The other was two Narrow-winged Pug (its possible I've overlooked these before).

18th May:
2 Narrow-winged Pug NFG
2 Nut-tree Tussock NFY
2 Yellow-barred Brindle NFY
2 Shuttle-shaped Dart NFY
1 Flame Shoulder NFY
1 Brindled Pug
1 Peppered Moth
1 Mottled Pug NFY
1 Water Carpet NFG
1 Buff-tip NFY
1 Green Carpet NFY




Mottled Pug (not the best shot, but this was a pristine example)

Nut-tree Tussock

Buff-tip

Narrow-winged Pug

Water Carpet

April show-ers

This warm weather is encouraging more moths to emerge. There were large swarms of long-horn moths on our local oak trees. They were too high to photograph but could well have been Nematapogon swammerdamella. Below is a selection that came to my trap last night:

purple thorn

nut-tree tussock

iron prominent

flame shoulder

common quaker (a worn specimen which at first glance looked rather like a powdered quaker)

brimstone

And a waved umber from a couple of nights ago...

Summer in Spring

The weather has been glorious this last week (perhaps too glorious, as I found out for not wearing suncream!), and not just during the day. Cloud cover has been minimal, but the mild, almost summer like night temperatures have been keeping the moths coming. So far this April, highlights from the garden trap have included...

Lunar Marbled Brown- A fairly common mid-spring species in Surrey, caught on 8th...

The Streamer- A real stunner, and my first ever, taken on 7th. Possibly one of my new favourite moths!

Nut-tree Tussock- A more expected addition to the year list on 7th, although I have only ever had a fleeting glance at one, this time last year when one landed briefly on the trap just in time for me to identify it, before disappeared off into the night...

Esperia sulphurella- This one had me scratching my head when I first caught it on 8th, but thanks to the 500 odd micro photos covered on my newly acquired Chris Manley's Moths and Butterflies photographic guide, I managed to pin it down. A common and widespread species across the whole of Surrey...

Pale Mottled Willow- It was great to finally catch the first PMW of the year on 1st, but the novelty will soon wear off, and this can be one of the commonest species in the trap in throughout the spring, summer and autumn.

Early Grey- Caught on 1st, a first for me. The name doesn't really do the moth justice though, I think it looks quite smart.



25th April - Ken

For once there was some cloud cover last night, which meant that I had a few moths in the trap. As well as brindled pug, I think I had a double-striped pug but it flew away before I managed to catch it - it would have been my first for the year.
Purple thorn and lunar marbled brown were noted.
The species that were new for 2010 were:
the tiny micro with a long name (about 6mm long and tricky to photo) Eriocrania subpurpurpella
nut-tree tussock
Alucita hexadactyla (also called twenty-plumed moth) - another small micro.

I got my best catch for some time last night with plenty of cloud cover. I got an incredible catch of 17 Brindled Pug, as well as 11 Common Quaker, 9 Hebrew Character, 4 Clouded Drab, 1 Powdered Quaker, 1 Small Quaker, 1 Nut-tree Tussock (new for the year), 1 Iron Prominent (new for the year), 1 Brindled Beauty (new for the garden), as well as 1 Twenty-plume Moth, and 2 Black Burrying Beetles (Nicrophorous humator).