Tawny Pinion leads the April listings

A second garden tick for the year and closely related but much rarer than the first (Pale Pinion), this Tawny Pinio was a real surprise on an otherwise quiet night in the trap. To my knowledge, only three other's caught in VC30 since 2006, all from the Matt's efforts at Upper Caldecotte.

 Tawny Pinion, 24th April

Other recent more interesting species trapped include:

 Streamer - one of my favourites in the spring due to its purple tones, a handful trapped every year

 Herald - first spring record, previous only in July 2013

Powdered Quaker - a couple every year, usually appearing after the other quakers have started to diminish in numbers

Muslin Moth

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

Marching on...

As the last few days of March passed with warmer and dryer nights, the trap continued to pull in moths each evening with the expected Common Quakers, Hebrew Characters and Clouded Drabs and a few Small Quaker and Early Grey to add some variety. Two new species for me in addition to these broke up the relative monotony, both pleasingly distinctive from the usual brown jobs.

Streamer (first for garden 24/3) presumable fresh as showing lots of purple colour

Early Thorn (first for garden 28/3)