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.

Trapping? - More like Trappist!

Trappist monks, known for their silence and austerity, remind me of what moth trapping has been like here. It has either been forecast to be austere and make it not worth a light (sic) or on those nights where it has been "warm" their has been very little to say.

The contents of the traps over 5 sessions has been just 11 moths.

Yesterday however the sun was shining and at last there was something to look forward to - a day out, and where better than on the Mynd to look for Green Hairstreaks - of which we saw only 3, but there was a Small Copper too and lots of Whites.

More interesting was that there were several moths flying and I managed to catch a Red Twin-spot Carpet, a Common Carpet and a couple of micros which I could not identify. However they both turned out to be Neofaculta ericetella - Gelechiidae moths - duly reported to the National Gelechid Recording Scheme. The species name referring to the fact that the larvae feed on heather. There were longhorns about too (Adela reaumurella), which I had also noted in the garden a few days earlier.



Neofaculta ericetella

With the evening remaing pleasant, a climb over the back fence and a tour of Brockhurst resulted in another new moth, this being a very strongly marked Syndemis musculana - common, but very welcome.

Syndemis muscula

The Lime Hawkmoth and the Pale Tussock pupae both hatched out yesterday too (see older posts referring to them).

My collection of caterpillars for breeding out is growing (literally and in numbers!) All I have to do now it identify them.

Few but new!

It has continued to be chilly at night and there have only been a few moths, but at least some of them have been new to the site. Last night there were only 12 moths, 2 of which were not in the trap but on the wall next to it - both were new! One of these moths was frosted - no, not that cold - it was a Frosted Green (a Thyatiridae, not a Noctuidae) and the other was a Yellow-barred Brindle (a Geometridae).


Frosted Green

But in spite of the weather there has been a lot going on. Some of the larvae I collected from the heather in the garden last year have succesfully emerged and have caused some rethinking!

Yellow-barred Brindle

Yes, I have had a Ling Pug emerge, as I reported in a recent post and indeed a second one, BUT when the next moth emerged it was a Narrow-winged Pug - and so more research was needed.

Narrow-winged Pug

The best place for that was on the UK-leps site and lo-and-behold there are beautiful photos of  Pug larva there.

In spite of my previous efforts I now need to change some of my records because they are wrong!






It appears that lovely purple and white larva (5 October) is that of the Narrow-winged Pug (not Ling or Satyr) and a similar, but much duller larvae (not shown) is that of the Ling Pug.

Otherwise, there have been a number of larvae in the garden, most notably those eating the leaves of the Primroses and Cowslips. Identifying these is either by a one-by-one search of The UK Caterpillars book, (or the UKMoths site) or by searching the "food plants" literature - if you have got it!

There is quite a range of larvae to choose from, all very similar looking, one of which is called the Uncertain!
It may be a long time before I am sure.

A Triumph (old)

You will of course remember the Triumph cars and perhaps the Triumph Herald? I shall not be putting a picture of one here, instead I will put one of my favourite moth - the Herald. This distinctively shaped moth with beautiful shades of orange, greyish brown and white with deeply scalloped and indented outer wing edges was one of the first I ever recorded, some 40 years or more ago. These moths over-winter in outbuildings, caves, etc. and in several years of living in France I never saw one.

Herald

Also new for us were a Nut-tree Tussock, a Garden Carpet and a Waved Umber. The latter two flew off before I could get a photo, but I feel sure there will be others.

Nut-tree Tussock

I could have caled this blog "Pug-awash" (or similar) as there were 13 Pug moths in the trap. These small geometrid moths are the most difficult group to identify as there are several which are similar and many of them are dark forms (melanic) which makes it even worse! I think there were at least 3 different species among them.

With 19 species, this was the best night of the year so far. 3 Twenty-plume moths added a new species to my list here. If you count the plumes you will see that there are only 12 - which is why its Latin name is Alucita hexadactyla.

Twenty-plume Moth

The travelling trap

As part of the SACWG survey, "Moths in YOUR garden", the trap has travelled twice in the last few days. On the 2nd, it was taken to Wall and the trap was placed in the back garden with a huge expanse of fairly bare fields beyond and very few trees in sight. So it was a pleasant surprise the following morning to find more than 50 moths in (and around) the trap, with 11 species and our first Brindled Beauty - 3 of them.



Brindled Beauty (from Wall)

On Sunday the trap travelled to Gulley Green to an environment which looked ideal for moths, set in 10 acres of woods, valleys and gardens, what could be better?
Yes, you guessed, the night was not as warm as promised and with a cool breeze and a clear sky we were somewhat disappointed to find around 30 moths of 7 species.

At home it was a similar story, except that the warm days led to a few micro-moths hatching out from some of the leaf-mines which I had collected last autumn.

You may recall (or look back) the mines on lilac (14 September blog) which all hatched out - Gracillardia syringella and on the blog of 17 December the leaf mines on Beech. These turned out to be Phyllonorycter maestingella.



Gracillaria syringella



Phyllonorycter maestingella

 

In addition, the lovely purple and white larva shown on the 6th October blog did indeed confirm the Ling pug, as predicted.

Ling Pug