MOTHS GALORE

Sunday's weather was glorious with the temperature above 15°C, and what did that imply? Well simply that there ought to be a few more moths about that night. So the trap was switched on and I could not resist a few visits during the late evening to see if there were any moths. It was in fact a bit like being at Heathrow - probably even more busy than there, but off the top of my head I don't know how many plans arrive there overnight.

So, let's start with a few facts and figures. There were 318 moths in the trap this morning (including those sitting on the walls, etc...). 188 of these were Small Quaker moths, and in total there were 22 species.
Six other species were in double figures, these being Common Quaker 33, Hebrew Character 24, Oak Beauty 15, March Moth 15 and Chestnut 11.

When I look back to my records for this time last year, I see that I only ran the trap 4 times in March and only caught 26 moths in total and it was not until mid April that I caught large numbers of this species and then only just over 100.

No new moths for the site, but a fresh Acleris literana was a pleasant surprise.


Acleris literana

During the day, I spotted a hairy caterpillar sunning itself on a Periwinkle leaf and took the following photo. It is clearly one of the "Tiger" moths larvae, but so far I have not been able to identify it.

Larva to I.D.