The Birds

Moth trapping took on an ornithological theme on Saturday night, with two of the new moths having our feathered friends to thank for their names. The definite highlight was this Bird's Wing. A stunning moth that gets it's name from the markings on the forewing looking like a birds wing.

Bird's Wing

The second bird-related moth was this Common Swift. A moth that Graham has caught before, but had eluded me up until now.

Common Swift

Other new moths for the garden came in the form of two pugs and a micro. There was a Grey Pug and a few Slender Pugs in the trap, along with a micro Scoparia ambigualis.

Scoparia ambigualis

Grey Pug

I also recorded a Purple Bar, a species I recorded last summer, along with a few Broom Moth, Treble Lines and Brown Rustic. Commonest moth is still Brown Silver-lines, with 15 in the trap.

Beaten at the post ...

But hopefully not a second class delivery.  It has been a busy time since my last post and there has been far too much going on for it all to appear here in pictures.

There have been moths everywhere, but not always when wanted. For example there was a Common Marbled Carpet on the CS Library wall last Friday and in the wetland field down Ludlow Road I caught a Common White Wave and a Crambus lathionellus.  Then on a trip to Rushbury later that day I caught several micros, including Pammene rhediella.

Pammene rhediella

Then on Saturday the trap went to Longhills Road as part of the SACWG survey and in spite of the reasonable weather, the catch of just 6 moths was disappointing. Fortunately, the ambience was "tops".
Undeterred, on Sunday night the trap travelled about 100 yards down and across Ludlow road, backing on to the woods of the Mynd and this was the most productive night of the year with 24 species, several of them being new for us. Not enough space to post all the pictures, so just a selection here, including a Sandy carpet and a Silver-ground Carpet. A couple of nice, if common micros were Acleris literana and Notocelia cynosbatella (it has changed its genus name!)

Sandy Carpet

Silver-ground Carpet

Follow that, I thought and so I did, with the trap on here last night. And, yes, it was a bumper night here too, with several more new moths for us. here is a small selection.


Figure of eighty

Rivulet

Poplar Grey

Nemophora degeerella

And lots more, including an Elephant Hawkmoth!

Clean sweep

As so often with moths, the first time you record a particular species each year you can record several of them, even though they were not around just a few day before.

In this instance, Broom Moths have been emerging in Batch Valley, with four in the trap. This is actually quite a pretty noctuid moth, with subtle shades of orange, pink and brown. The key identification feature is the distinctive pale line near the wing tips, running into a blotch were the wings meet over the body. Despite what the picture suggests, this moth had two healthy antennae. The left one was folded along the body when the picture was taken.

Broom Moth

There was competition for the prettiest moth of the night though. Another contender was this Buff Ermine was found resting just outside the trap. It is certainly an attractive moth, and also a common species probably found in most gardens. The line of dark markings running across the wing is the distinctive feature, as some White Ermines can be of a similar colour but have many more darks spots spread across the wings.

Buff Ermine

There was another new species for my garden, a Heart & Dart. The reason for the name is obvious when you look. The long dark mark on each wing is the 'Dart', and the heart-shaped kidney is the 'Heart'.

Heart & Dart

Where do cinnas drink?

No, that is not a spelling mistake and it it not a reference to our evening in the Bucks Head! Answer is of course in a Cinnabar, and I was pleased to get one in my trap last night. There has been a lot of activity and my trap on Sunday night and last night has produced some quite pretty and very different moths, as hopefully you will see from the photos below. It is interesting that with only a couple of miles between our traps and the fact that we are in similar environments, we are often getting a different selection of moths, though there are those in common too. So, I will not mention the two Small Elephant Hawk-moths I got last night.

Sunday night produced the following new moths for me here: White-pinion Spotted, Scorched Wing and Small Phoenix (all geometrids).

White-pinion Spotted

Scorched Wing

Small Phoenix

                                                                   

There were a couple of micros on the front lawn and they were Diamond-back Moths and they are "important" because they are immigrants, sometimes arriving in the UK in large numbers and can breed here - and from reports from Yorkshire, this seems to be a bumper year. (Not a good photo I'm afraid).

Diamond-back Moth

This morning, as on Monday morning, the most numerous "thing" in the trap was Cockchafer beetles! However, there were some more pleasant surprises.

First was a different Nematopogon (longhorn) moth N. schwartziella (cf. my previous post) this one being a bit smaller and slightly darker.

Nematopogon schwartziella

Star of the show for me was the above mentioned Cinnabar. You will have seen its caterpillars, with black and yellow bands, feeding on ragwort. There was also a Buff Ermine as well as a White Ermine.

Cinnabar

Buff Ermine

There was an Orange Footman too, not really a surprise, but 10 years ago it would have been "a suspected immigrant", but now seems to live throughout the UK.

Orange Footman

Then there was a Pug - a species of moth which are considered very difficult to identify easily. Fortunately there are a few which are easy, and this included the Foxglove Pug - you may look back and find a photo of its caterpillar.

Foxglove Pug

Swallow Prominent, Muslin Moth, White Ermine and Spectacle and last but not least was a Common Swift, reminding me that I have lived here more than 9 months now and that most of the moths in the future may be repeats - though there are still several hundreds to find!

Swallow Prominent

Muslin Moth

Spectacle

Common Swift

An Elephant in the grass

There was a very nice surprise in the garden yesterday afternoon. I let some areas of the lawn grow long, to give a bit of diversity to the sward, and in the long grass I found this Small Elephant Hawkmoth lurking. My moth highlight of the year so far.

Small Elephant Hawkmoth

It was therefore with some enthusiasm and optimism that I set up the moth trap. Within one minute of the trap being switched on, a had a visitor and another new species for the garden - a Treble Lines. In the morning there were four in and around the trap.

Treble Lines

There were three more new species waiting for me in the trap. The first was a Nut-tree Tussock, which Graham recorded and blogged about last month. The second was a subtle yet very pretty moth, a Shears. This moth gets its name from the pointed marks half way up the wing pointing towards the trailing edge.

The Shears

The other new species was this Brown Rustic., which caused a little bit of head-scratching before the identity was revealed.

Brown Rustic

In addition to the moths, there was also a Crane Fly in the trap. Over a pint or two in the Bucks Head last night, Graham told me how he has been sending pictures of Crane Flys to Pete Boardman to help with this years county atlas. So I decided to take a picture and send a tweet to Pete's @biofell account on twitter. I got a reply from @rockwolf74 identifying it as a Tipula oleracea, which was soon confirmed by Pete. An incredible looking beast it is too.

Tipula oleracea

A very mixed bag!

Oh to be in England .............

It has certainly been a mixed bag of weather and mothing has been equally mixed. However there is lots to report in spite of the trap being fairly empty. How come I hear you say? Well because if they won't come to you, you have to go and look for them.

And so, those that came to me included some firsts for me here, especially pleasing being the Buff-tip moth, which mimics a bit of broken twig. Here are 2 pictures, an unusual one of its head - but note the detail.


Buff-tip




Buff-tip (head on view)

Equally pleasing was a fine example of a Scalloped Hazel. Its caterpillar feeds on dozens of different plants but I guess they found it on Hazel in the days when the names were decided.


Scalloped hazel

Another new moth for the site, also a geometrid was the pretty Clouded Border...


Clouded Border

...and there was also a Lunar Marbled Brown, one of the Notodontidae family.

Lunar Marbled Brown

On the micro-moth front, there are literally thousands of the "longhorn" moth Adela reaumurella about and you can see them 'dancing' round the bushes in the sunlight. A trip to Soudley in the sunshine on Friday led to the capture of another longhorn, with possibly the longest antenna as well as the longest name - Nematopogon swammerdamella. Also caught was an Incurvaria masculella.

Nematopogon swammerdemella

Incurvaria masculella

On the home front, the Lime Hawkmoth, Pale Tussock and Peppered Moth caterpillars/pupae hatched out this week. All of these have featured previously on the blog.

Peppered Moth

And lastly, a Cydia ulicetana hatched from some gorse pods taken on the Mynd several weeks ago.

Cydia ulicetana

Better out than in!

It has been a long time since I have posted, mainly because I have gone a long time without seeing that many moths! May has been a poor 'mothing' month for me. Most of this has been self-inflicted, as I spent the first three weeks of May out in Canada. However, I was hoping that the last ten days of May would allow me to catch-up, but despite trapping several times my totals have been two Brown Silver-line in the trap and a (dead) Scalloped Hazel in my porch.

Thursday night was the last of May, and we finally had a promising forecast. I spent the evening helping with the Stretton Community Wildlife Group Red Grouse survey (no grouse seen but a rather splendid Whinchat was by my watchpoint) and the trap was duly put on upon my return.

Opening the curtains at 6am the following morning I could immediately tell the night had been more productive. There was a Pale Tussock on the window and before I got outside I could see a Poplar Hawkmoth resting on the outside of the trap.

Poplar Hawkmoth

A further check around the trap revealed a Common Carpet on top of the trap, a Brown Silver-line in the grass nearby and one of the Treble-bar species resting on one of the logs I put by the trap to attract roosting moths. Treble-bar and Lesser Treble-bar are very difficult to tell apart from the upperside, so after a quick photograph the moth was potted and I turned it over to check its claspers at the end of the abdomen. These were long and pointed, so a Treble-bar it was.

Treble-bar

I also spied a moth resting high up on the wall of my house. A bit of quick thinking and I got out my telescope so that I could identify it. It proved to be a new species, a Grey Birch, and I managed to 'digiscope' it  by taking a picture through my telescope. If any residents of All Stretton saw a strange man stood in his dressing gown in a garden, staring at the wall of his house through a telescope, there was a reason for this madness! The resulting pictures were not the best, but good enough to identify the moth.

Grey Birch

After all of this excitement, I was very keen to open the trap. I was sure there must be a lot of moths inside, with so many interesting species found before I even got to it. Alas, there were only four moths inside the trap. Three more Brown Silver-line and another Pale Tussock. Even so, I could not complain about a good mornings work.

Pale Tussock

By the way, if you think you have read about Pale Tussock before on this blog, you have. Graham found some larvae last year - see here.