Neil, Matthew and myself went up to Southwold beach last night for some light trapping. There were a couple of target species – Bordered Sallow and Sand Dart – moths we’d not seen for a while. Arriving at the site there was a brisk south-easterly breeze blowing across the dunes although out of the wind it was a warm night.
Five lights were put out – three on the exposed side of the dunes but where there was more variety of vegetation and two on the sheltered beach-side of the dunes, with rather limited choice of vegetation. After the first trap round the beach-side traps were much more active so we shifted the sheet light over to the beach-side as well.
As darkness fell Archer’s Dart and Drinker moths battled against the breeze to get to the sheet light. At the first trap round Shore Wainscot was noted from most of the traps, although the beach-side traps held the best numbers and species with a Bordered Sallow, Anerastia lotella and a couple of Lyme Grass.
As the evening progressed we managed to creep the species list up so that at the end I had 34 species recorded. Several more Bordered Sallow were seen and some more Lyme Grass. Other species of note included Phlyctaenia perlucidalis, Cream-spot Tiger, Privet Hawk-moth, Lime Hawk-moth, Elephant Hawk-moth, Dog’s Tooth and Bactra robustana.
We managed one of our targets but with the Sand Dart the opinion was that we may have missed it on the wing, with sightings from elsewhere occurring much earlier in the year.
Tony