Thursday 27 September 2012

To trap, or not to trap .... ?

Yes, that was the question I asked at around 7 o'clock last evening as it began to rain yet again. But it seemed quite mild and so thus promising, and the trap was switched on.

And was the result disappointing? NO, in the trap this morning were 31 moths of 13 different species and what is more, 2 new species for the site and a moth I have not seen since 2002 when I lived in Yorkshire, a beautiful Bulrush Wainscot. Its caterpillar feeds inside the stems of bulrushes, Typha latifolia.

Bulrush Wainscot

The picture below is of a Satellite Moth. The name comes from the fact that the "kidney-mark" (or more technically, the Reniform stigma)  has 2 very small dots below it which look like satellites going round it. The kidney mark is either white or orange and the satellites can be white or orange too. In this one there is one of each!

Satellite
Also in the trap was a Brown-spot Pinion, new to this site. The small grey micro-moth in my previous post (23 September) is an Elachista species and can only be accurately named after performance of a technical determination of its genitalia.

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