2014 is here and .....

A belated HNY to anyone looking. 
Not a lot of nights when it looked worth putting the trap on, but January the 5th seemed a possibility.
However the wind was very strong and turned the trap over quite early on. Nevertheless I re-set it and in the morning there were 2 Mottled Umbers.

Have not tried again since then and with the promise of cold nights it just did not seem to be worth the effort.

So it was a pleasant surprise to find a Spring Usher on the house wall last night when the outside light was left on for an hour or two. The fact that it snowed shows what brave (or stupid?) things moths are.

Spring Usher

Photo of a Spring Usher just to liven up the blog a little, but not the one from last night! These are quite pretty moths and very variable, as can be seen by looking at the photo from last year (click on its name in the list).

The weatherman said ....

That it was going to be warm last night, and he was right!

One of the best nights mothing for weeks!

There were more than 100 moths, of 10 species. OK, 77 of them were Mottled Umbers and 15 were Winter Moths, but so what.

The two above named species have something in common (along with a few others) and that is that the female moths are wingless, or virtually so. These female moths hatch out and sit around waiting for a male, mate, lay eggs on the same tree and, well you can guess the rest.

This means of course that these females never arrive in your trap and up to this week I had never seen one.

But, in the summer I had collected several larvae from trees and bushes around here and kept them fed and watered.  Several hatched out this week.


Winter Moth (f)



Winter Moth (m)



Mottled Umber (f)

 


                                                                                                             Mottle Umber (m)



Out and about

Put the trap on last night as the temperature was supposed to stay reasonable, but the catch was a bit disappointing to compared to the week before. There were however 22 moths of 4 species.

Undaunted we went for a walk up the path opposite the house and found some leaf miners on wild raspberry. Was able to get reasonable photos from my Iphone - a first for me.

Stigmella aurella on Raspberry

We took a trip to Earls Hill a couple of days later and I found a leaf miner on a Rowan leaf. This turns out to be Phyllonorycter sorbi, another first for me.

Phyllonorycter sorbi on Rowan

By chance I also found a pupa in a silken sheath covered in bits of dry old dead wood on an Oak stump. I wonder when it will hatch out and what it will be. Watch this space!

Unknown pupal case

Unknown pupa

Mines, mines and mines!

There are literally thousands of leaf mines around at the moment giving a great chance to add a few more species to the growing list of moths found in and around the Strettons.

On Wednesday I had the pleasure of accompanying the County Micro-moth Recorder on a tour round Rectory Wood, (in spite of the fact that it rained all the time) where we collected dozens of leaves from a range of trees.

First analysis reveals a list of 26 different moths, quite a number of which were new to me and some of them were certainly firsts for the Strettons and the 4th only records for Shropshire. Thanks Godfrey! The one shown is quite common, but was new for me. The larva first made a blotch mine (where it fed and then moved to the leaf edge, folded it over, stuck it down and munched in there until it  pupated.

Phyllonorycter devoniella

On Friday I returned to Rectory Field to inspect the Evergreen oak and the Turkey oak near the entrance and to collect mines. If truth were told, that was our objective on Wednesday but we "did" the woods and missed the oaks. This was also a successful visit.

And so, on Saturday, profiting from the sunshine, I went up the hill behind Stokesay Castle and did more collecting. One interesting find was the larva of a Brimstone moth. Quite a common moth, but its larva can be of two structurally different forms and it is said to have a life cycle which produces 3 broods in 2 years. This means they either pupate in the autumn and over-winter like  that, or (like this one) will live over winter as a larva. It is feeding on hawthorn, which will lose most of its leaves over winter!


Brimstone Moth (l)

And so to last night where the temperature stayed up above 10°C and the trap was switched on. There were 42 Mottled Umber Moths in and around the trap and another 41 moths of 12 different species. Well worth the effort.

It is unlikely that there will be more nights like that for some time, but....

In the meantime there are lots of leafmines around, so hope you are out there looking!

Let it rain!

On Monday we came back from a long weekend in Aderdovey where it had either been lovely sunshine or absolutely chucking it down. And it was chucking it down here too, so clearly not the night to put the trap on.
Well, actually, NO, it promised to be a very good night for mothing for 2 reasons. Firstly that moths are fairly waterproof (unless they get stuck in a puddle) and the weathermen promised an overnight low of around 14°C.

So, the trap was switched on in the pouring rain! And on Tuesday morning, still with the high temperature there were more than 50 moths in the trap.

The trap had been on on the 12th and 15th of October, these nights having catches of 40+ and nearly 60 moths.

All the usual suspects for this time of year are appearing but it was nice to get my first Streak here, and this moth has apparently not been recorded in Shropshire for 5 years or more.

Streak

Hopefully a few more warmer nights to come will bring something interesting.

Poor excuses!

Holidays, busy social life, laziness, all just excuses for not posting on here for far too long.
Worse is the fact that there have been lots of moths about, several new to me here.

First of all I should thank Chris for our super evening in Lydbury North (6th September) where we went, with our traps, to join members of their Community Wildlife Group and passed a super evening, in spite of the fact there were not a lot of moths, there was a Brown-spot Pinion, a first for the year.

Brown-spot Pinion

I have run my trap 10 times since then and on 4 of the first 5 nights there were very small catches, however, on the 19th, with only 7 species present, one was a Dark Sword-grass. This is an immigrant moth, with an unconfirmed possibility that spring arrivals breed in the UK.

Dark Sword-grass

Lots of caterpillars around and several micro-moths flying in the garden, 2 of which have been new to me here, and the A alstromeriana not having been recorded in Shropshire since 2006, the other being Acleris Rhombana.

Agonopterix alstromeriana

 

Acleris rhombana

The usual autumn moths, like Green-brindled Crescent and Beaded Chestnut  have started to appear, but catches will gradually decline as winter approaches.

Beaded Chestnut

Going for gold

The weather may have turned cold and rainy, but last week there was still some warmth and moth activity. I ran the trap on Monday night and was pleased to record three new species, along with a couple of 'NFY' (new for the year) moths. Undoubted highlight was this Gold Spot, a moth which is typically found in damp habitats.

Gold Spot

Unlike this rather handsome moth, the other new two species had seen far better days. In fact one of them took me quite a while to identify. The first had suffered from a bit of battering, this Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing. Despite having much of it's wings missing, the markings were still clear.

Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing

The other new moth was a different proposition. Moths belong to Lepidoptera, and the literal translation of this is (lepis) scale (pteron) wing. The reason is that the wings of moths are covered with a huge number of tiny scales, which give the patterns and colours. As moths age so do these scales age, fade and disappear. This means that moths become'worn', which leads to much head-scratching when trying to identify them. This Chevron moth is great example, when fresh these are beautiful yellow and orange moths. In this instance I caught two of these grey looking insects!

Chevron

My two 'NFY' moths were in much better shape. It was a welcome return for the Hedge Rustic, an attractive moth of dark hues which is quite common here in the autumn.

Hedge Rustic

I also had this November Moth 'agg.' This is one of a group of moths which are virtually indistinguishable from each other, without resorting to some drastic measures of dissection.

November Moth agg.