I met up with Sharon Hearle at Barnhamcross Common last night to have a search for Lunar Yellow Underwing (Noctua orbona) larvae. It was quite a warm night and we managed to avoid the rain that turned up a bit later so conditions were good. We’ve done quite a bit of searching for this larvae in the Sandlings but not the Suffolk Brecks so I was interested to compare and contrast with previous experiences.
We began searching in the south-western part of the site, where the soil is more chalky and where I would consider the grass sward a bit too dense for optimal Lunar Yellow Underwing habitat. As we have recorded the moth as an adult on the site before it was not too surprisingly that we found a few orbona larvae, but it took a while. Other larvae found were Large Yellow Underwing, Square-spot Rustic and Angle Shades.
On the eastern side of the road the soil is more acidic and where we searched the sward seemed similar to the rabbit-grazed ‘lawns’ that we found supported good numbers of the larvae in the Sandlings. Here we found better numbers of orbona larvae finding over twenty in just ten minutes.
The final find of the night was a full grown Fox Moth larva wandering across the turf, a little bit unexpected.
Tony