Two Beauties

Put the trap on last night for the first time in February - and only the second time in 2014.  Well, it was the most promising night with a reasonable temperature forecast.

But there were only 4 moths on the trap this morning, 2 x Pale Brindled Beauty and 2 x Oak Beauty.

And on the porch door early this evening an Agonopterix heracliana, a common micro-moth which has featured here before, but the photo was not very good, so here is a better one.

Agonopterix heracliana

In total I have only seen 9 moths this year and the forecast for the next few nights is low temperatures.

Last year, in January and February I saw 92 moths before the end of February, having run the trap on 6 occasions.

A few more

There were a few more moths in the trap last night. Four of these were macro moths, with another Chestnut, along with the first Dotted Border and Pale Brindled Beautys of the year. There were also four micro moths, - Tortricodes alternella, the commonest micro here at this time of year.

Pale Brindled Beautys can be quite variable moths, as these two individuals show.

Pale Brindled Beauty

Pale Brindled Beauty

Ruby, ruby, ruby, ruby

Relentless storms, horizontal rain, gale-force winds and ice cold nights. It is enough to make you want to stay inside and curl up in front of the fire. Plenty of creatures do not have that choice of course, braving out the winter, and it may surprise you to learn that this includes caterpillars no bigger than your little finger.

Ruby Tiger larva

This Ruby Tiger larva was crawling up my wall today, seemingly brought out by the sunshine. It is one of a small number of moths which overwinter in their larval stage. How do they do it without turning to ice? It seems that moths use strategies to survive. One is having their own form of antifreeze, which enable them to survive freezing temperatures, with the larva rolling into tight furry balls when temperatures are below freezing. Ruby Tiger larva are also polyphagous, meaning they literally eat many things, so when they feed they have a wider choice of herbaceous plants.

Ruby Tiger larva

I left the caterpillar to slowly continue on its way, pleased with another addition to the garden moth list.

That old Chestnut

A happy new year from Batch Valley also. After a hiatus of a couple of months the moth trap was out again. The endless bad weather brightened a little, with a stiller night and less rain.

Proof that moths were surviving the winter was provided as four made their way to the trap. Three of those were Spring Ushers, the same moth found by Graham a few days ago.

Spring Usher - a paler example

The other was a Chestnut, a case of the old familiar. This is one of several moths that can be found right throughout the winter, and is always a contender if the trap is out between autumn and spring.

Chestnut

These moths made a cameo performance at today's Strettons Community Area Wildlife Group AGM. We have several new people signed up for this years Moths in YOUR Garden surveys, so we have new places to visit once the moths start to play.

Catkins

The trees are alive with catkins, on Alder, Hazel and more to come soon. So, it being a reasonable day we had a visit to Gogbatch - well, that's what we call it!

The Alder trees were covered in catkins so a few went in a pot for inspection at home.
With a x10 or better lens, it is easy to see if there any small holes in the catkins - and if there are it generally means there is a caterpillar inside. Later you can see frass on the catkin - (frass = caterpillar poo).

Here is a photo showing exactly that, and if you are lucky you may also see the caterpillar come out to have a look at the rest of the world.

Alder catkin

 

And yes, luck was in.

 

 

Larvae from above catkin

The problem now is to try and identify the moth species of this caterpillar and of course there is a choice. The easiest choice is to wait until it turns into a moth, but there is always the chance that it will not survive. At the moment, there is still the chance as it has pupated. All I have to do now is ensure that it does not go mouldy!
And the guess at the moment is Argyresthia goedartella, but it may be brockeella.

Although I have collected several Hazel catkins, I have yet to find a larva.

                                                                                                                                                                                                     

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)