Pouring and Prominents

What appaling weather we've been having.  I haven't trapped since March!  I thought it was worth trying last night after a reasonably warm day, although I was sure to fit the rain guard!  I got a nice selection including a new species for the garden.  Unsurprisingly, all but one were year ticks.  The new one was a Swallow Prominent.  I'm used to getting Lesser, but it was nice to get both together.  Unbelievably, despite it being quite a diverse (or be it not that numerous) catch, I didn't get a single Noctuid!

8th May:

5 Brindled Pug

3 Lesser Swallow Prominent NFY

1 Swallow Prominent NFG

1 Brimstone NFY

1 Red Twin-spot Carpet NFY

1 Waved Umber NFY

1 Peppered Moth NFY

1 Great Prominent NFY

1 Grey Pine Carpet NFY

1 Purple Thorn NFY

1 Currant Pug NFY

1 Maiden's Blush NFY

1 Brindled Beauty NFY

I also got loads of Twenty-plume Moths and this micro, Plutella porrectella:

Plutella porrectella

Brimstone

Swallow and Lesser Swallow Prominents

Brindled Beauty

Currant Pug

Great Prominent

Maiden's Blush

Purple Thorn

Peppered Moth

Waved Umber

A brief respite....

Despite all my best intentions to put a trap out every day I was home, the miserable weather got the better of me.  But a bright sunshiney day yesterday, and an Early Grey on the office window at work, persuaded me to switch it on last night.  I was quite surprised by what I found this morning:

2 x Frosted Green
1 x Lunar Marbled Brown
1 x Green Carpet
1 x Lesser Swallow Prominent
1 x Maiden's Blush
 1 x Pebble Hook-tip

Lesser Swallow Prominent

Maiden's Blush

Pebble Hook-tip

One-hundered-and-eighty! Game on at Farnham

I went trapping away from the garden by myself for the first time, using my MV. With power courtesy of the Rural Life Centre, I was able to trap last night in a recently felled clearing at Farnham Heath RSPB reserve. Conditions could not have been much better, with cloud rolling in just after dusk. I was kept pretty busy, although the final count of 43 macro species for the whole night is a tad dissapointing, possibly because of the late-ish time of year. Best was a White-line Dart, which pretty much a lifer (I saw one in a pot at Dungeness on a moth morning once). Also nice heathland species of Dotted Border Wave and Beautiful Yellow Underwing. My first adult Oak Eggar in Surrey too. I paid a lot of attention to the micros, to try not to loose any records by photographing them all for ID later. I'll do a separate post for those, once I have the ID's. One that I think I could do however, was Synaphe punctalis, which was very common. A couple of interesting Beetle vistiors too. I also have a Carpet which stumped me.

August 1st, Farnham Heath:

Yellow-tail

Lesser Yellow Underwing

Common Footman

Scarce Footman (loads!)

Oak Nycteoline

Ruby Tiger

Beautiful Hook-tip

Small Fan-footed Wave

Shuttle-shaped Dart

Oak Eggar

Riband Wave

Uncertain

Common Rustic

Beautiful Yellow Underwing

Yellow Shell

Rosy Footman

Lesser Swallow Prominent

True Lover's Knot

Black Arches

Dark Arches

Dingy Footman

Dunbar

Tawny-barred Angle

Pine Hawk

White-line Dart*

Dotted Border Wave

Plain Wave

Grey Pine Carpet
Nut-tree Tussock

Lime-speck Pug

Narrow-winged Pug

Brown-line Bright-eye

Scalloped Hook-tip

Dark Sword-grass

Willow Beauty

Oak Hook-tip

Horse Chestnut

Pebble Hook-tip

Large Yellow Underwing

Buff Footman

Setaceous Hebrew Character

Pine Carpet

September Thorn

At first I thought it was a Common, but the white lines are not clear enough. Any ideas?

Synaphe punctalis

Lesser Swallow Prominent

Dotted Border Wave

Plain Wave

Oak Eggar

Gigantic Pine Longhorn Beetle (it was at least the size of a Stag Beetle)

Eyed Ladybird


White-line Dart

Lets try and make the 200th blog post a good one chaps!

Improving weather...and moths

After a gap of a month, I was back trapping in the garden last night. The weather still looked clear, and when I tended the trap in the morning, the light was out (probably a loose connection). Despite these setbacks, I still managed 35 moths of 10 species, all but one of which were new for the year! The best one was probably only my second ever Pale-shouldered Brocade. Lets hope the weather is on the change for the better.

25th May:

22 Heart and Dart

3 Treble Line

2 Grey Pine Carpet

2 Rustic

1 Bird's Wing

1 Lesser Swallow Prominent

1 Shuttle-shaped Dart

1 Ingrailed Clay

1 Pale-shouldered Brocade

1 May Highflyer

Lesser Swallow Promient (I only ever seem to get Lesser in the garden)

Pale-shouldered Brocade

P.S. Sorry Ken, but there appears to be some sort of glitch, meaning I can't reply to comments. Yes, I am still using your trusty trap in the garden! There appears to be a loose connection in the plug at the moment, hopefully easily fixed.

Mega numbers make up for Minor pain

In seemingly unpromising conditions, and circumstances, I got my best catch this year in terms of number of individuals (94), but oddly, a rather low species count of 26 (this was not down to Large Yellow Underwing as it would usually be - I got only one!).
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Amongst these were one new for the garden, and two other year ticks. The new garden species was an unsurprising one really, two Cloaked Minor. I also got another Scallop Shell, which I was happy to get a decent shot of this time. Some pretty micros present too. The difficult circumstances mentioned before were that 6-7 wasps were present in/around the trap, and whilst checking the light first thing this morning, one suddenly lunged at me and stung me on the chest (they ate one of my Buff Ermines too)! It was worth it in the end though.
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28th July:
19 Dunbar
12 Riband Wave
10 Common Rustic sp.
7 Flame
7 Dark Arches
6 Shuttle-shaped Dart
4 Double Square-spot
4 Rustic
3 Uncertain
2 Lesser Swallow Prominent NFY
2 Svensson's Copper Underwing
2 July Highflyer
2 Cloaked Minor NFG
2 Copper Underwing
2 Buff Ermine
1 Oak Hook-tip
1 Scallop Shell
1 Yellow-barred Brindle
1 Scalloped Oak
1 Poplar Hawk-moth
1 Rosy Minor
1 Large Yellow Underwing
1 Vine's Rustic NFY
1 Small Fan-footed Wave
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Cochylis atricapitana

Oegoconia quadripuncta/deauratella

Pyrausta aurata

Common Rustic sp. (this was very bold in the flesh, more like a Dot Moth)

Vine's Rustic (not 100% certain)

Lesser Swallow Prominents

Scallop Shell

Cloaked Minor