Yellow Pages

Autumn is a season when a good selection of yellow moths are around in the garden, here are a few that have come my way over the last couple of weeks.

 Dusky Thorn

Pink-barred Sallow - NFG 29th September, another on 5th October

 Barred Sallow

Sallow - a paler-winged individual

 Brick - this battered and worn moth was a NFG on 21st October

Yellow-line Quaker - first for the year was 2nd October, three weeks or so earlier than normal for me

Brimstone - maintaining the theme I have not blogged one of these before. get them every night through summer and autumn

The autumn... apparently

For the sake of completeness I thought I ought to blog what happened at Wychwood moths from mid September through November, but it won't take long. Disappointing to put it mildly compared with the previous two autumns. After a peak of Lunar Underwings it was just the usual reasonable showings from Black Rustic, Blairs Shoulder Knot and Red-green Carpet, it was odd singles of the remaining commoner species from the list. Managed to get just one each of the two "lined" Quakers,  Sallow, Large Ranunculus, November Moth and a couple of Feathered Thorn. So many species not occurring at all that I have had in multiple numbers before eg Chestnuts.

Squeezing the pot

Numbers are well down now to between zero and four macros and the odd micro each night in the last week. Surprise was a total of nine Juniper Carpets with a maximum of three on one night when I already had a fourth individual in a pot. Specialities of the season though still come along to add to the year list and there are a few more still to get so I will keep the trap out when it is not intending to chuck it down. Nothing new for the garden but all of these were caught last year in single figure numbers.

Satellite 1st Nov (just one in 2010 on Nov 7th)

Red-line Quaker

Yellow-line Quaker

1497 Amblyptilia...

October quietly passes

Did not have the trap out for a while due to cold and being away for the half-term week (missing the Shore Lark in the meantime). In the last four nights however, despite the recent mild spell, things have been quieter than I had expected with just five moths trapped comprising:

Pale Mottled Willow x2
Shuttle-shaped Dart
Spruce Carpet
Yellow-line Quaker (garden first record 31/10)

taking the October total to just 27 species of which 21 were Noctuidae.
Still plenty of autumn fayre to pickup for the first time next year !

Yellow-line Quaker