Prominent promenade

I posted last August, towards the end of my third summer of garden mothing, about the "prominent" gap in my garden list, having recorded only three Maples and one Coxcomb of all the species carrying that name. The next week a Pale popped up and the gap was slightly smaller.
So all was quiet and the gap was forgotten going into 2013 with low expectations of much more.
Suddenly things look different and is it purely a statistical coincidence ?

 Iron Prominent - new for garden 19th June 2013

Pebble Prominent - new for garden 20th June 2013

So two new proms on consecutive nights, and three NFG on three consecutive nights overall, a good week.

Beautiful...

Not really on my radar as a possible garden addition as they do not seem to be reported around these parts and not sitting on many lists either so this was a very nice surprise this morning and was also my first NFG this year

Beautiful Golden Y - new for garden 16th June 

Mid June goodies

Just about getting going now at Wychwood Moths with numbers still low but the first signs of some proper diversity in the catch. Some images capture of some of those species not so well recorded in all traps around the county.

Small Elephant Hawkmoth - second for garden 16th June, in immaculate condition;
previous was a battered individual found dead in trap 26th June 2011

Toadflax Brocade - second for garden 16th June; 

previous record was coincidentally on 16th June 2010 and was the second record for VC30

Broken-barred Carpet - sixth garden record on 11th June and a species notably absent from the list of some of the well known local trappers

End of May - still waiting for lift-off

Still on the launch pad in Luton but various of the usual pugs are putting in an appearance and they're fresh enough to be able to work out what most of them are. Only just starting to get the increased diversity of species that I usually get from end of April. Not sure our local bat isn't helping himself to a few either...

 Mottled Pug

 White-spotted Pug

 Common Pug

 Scorched Carpet

 Treble Lines

 Nut-tree Tussock

Reed Twin-spot Carpet

First part of May

Apart from a couple of nights it's still not really got going yet this year in the garden. I have however managed  to get only my second ever garden Powdered Quaker and second ever Purple Thorn, which unfortunately got away before the shutter clicked. Waved Umber has produced a handful of specimens every year so far., all but one previously in April.

April...

...can be summed up in one statistic and one slang word.
April 2011 = 34 species, April 2013 = 5.
Sh*te
and one photo of the only moth worth mentioning

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.