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)

Oak Nycteoline... first "goodie" of the year

Warm and cloudy evening produced my first real variety of the year from the garden trap. Top spot on the list goes to this garden first Oak Nycteoline which seems to be rather an unusual species in Bedfordshire. The book tells me this is of the form "notata".
Also new for the garden in the last couple of nights have been a Twin-spotted Quaker and Shoulder Stripe (three records) and a couple of micros that I actually managed to identify !

Oak Nycteoline (form notata) - garden first 22/3/11

Twin spotted Quaker

Shoulder Stripe

Full garden list for the evening of March 22nd: 20 macro of 9 species

Common Quaker - 5

Hebrew Character - 8

Small Quaker - 1

Clouded Drab - 1

Twin Spotted Quaker - 1 NFG

Double-striped Pug - 1 FFY

March Moth - 1
Early Grey - 1

Oak Nycteoline - 1 NFG

Twenty Plume Moth

Emmelina monodactyla

Diurnea fagella NFG

You (Oak) Beauty !

After a couple of days fretting as others seemed to be getting these while none were arriving at Wychwood Moths, I was most pleased when a check around the trap during Saturday evening produced this Oak Beauty investigating the illuminated fence panel. I have had no return visit or second individual in the three subsequent evenings. Also new for the year have been a few Small Quakers and one Grey Shoulder Knot, a species that I did not record last autumn.
Common Quaker continues as the predominant species with plenty of Hebrew Characters and multiple Clouded Drab and Early Grey also.

Oak Beauty (garden first March 12th)

Small Quaker

Grey Shoulder Knot (garden first March 12th)

Spring springs at last - March 10th

The last days of February and first week of March passed by with only a handful of moths trapped, a few Dotted Border, a March Moth, a Chestnut and the first few Common Quakers and Hebrew Character. The warmth of the last night prompted the first proper haul of the year though with a better total of 14 moths in the trap. I am now hoping that the next few nights will bring some variety to add to the numbers. Still waiting for my Oak Beauty to arrive...

Last nights total: Common Quaker - 11, Clouded Drab - 1, Hebrew Character - 1, Early Grey - 1

Hebrew Character

Early Grey

Common Quaker

Common Quaker - 11

Clouded Drab - a very dark one

Dotted Border

March Moth

Winter finally over ?

The three months of November through January were very quiet for Wychwood Moths. The trap was out on many nights that promised temperatures above 3 degrees and little or no precipitation but very few individuals were attracted. Early November had a few remnants from autumn and just two new ones for the year in Satellite and Dark Chestnut but after the first week there were very few catches.
December was even quieter, just two moths trapped and both on the same warm night between Christmas and New Year, this being my first winter though they were still both new to me.
January just the one Early moth added to the tally. Thankfully, the second part of February has begun to show better results, more of that later.

Satellite

Winter Moth

December Moth (29th Dec) - nice hairy beast

Early Moth (the only trap in January - 19th)

Pile of Carpets - Summer 2010

With the continuing coldness of winter, I have concluded that I will go through December with no moths at all this month. So I thought a chance to go through the images from the summer, before this blog began, and pull out some variety to remember the warmer times. To begin a short series of selections, here are a pile of carpets from June and July.

Common Marbled Carpet, the most frequent and numerous Carpet sp in the garden this summer with lots in June and a second generation around end September and early October.

This one is the paler form.

Common Marbled Carpet. This one is the darker form which was more regular than the pale.


Least Carpet (just two of these in July)


July Highflyer (seven of these - all in July)

Phoenix (five of these - 27/6 and four in July) showing resting position with the abdomen curled upwards

Common Carpet (not common at all in the garden )

Spruce Carpet which appeared in summer and again in October

Grey Pine Carpet appeared in June and October - not all grey as this one shows

Garden Carpet - the second most common with nearly as many visits as the CMC

Blue- bordered Carpet (a scarcer moth and from this group probably my favourite due to its beautiful blue hues) - occurred 25/6, 29/6 and 18/7

Broken-barred Carpet (another scarcer local species) - three in June

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