As the group event to Staverton was cancelled due to the rain, thought I’d put a couple of traps out in the garden instead. Was still raining at dusk and was a bit on the windy side, nearly didn’t bother but thought what the hell. Was to be my last trapping attempt for June also. Come morning, there were a few moths present, mostly run of the mill stuff but was surprised to come across a micro in the twin 30w actinic I didn’t recognize. Has turned out to be Monopis imella, a species I’ve never seen before and hence a new site record. After catching a few new micros last year with yellow heads and unicolorous wings, this is another species like that! Wonder why a number of micros have this colour pattern? Just goes to show that even on poor nights something may just turn up. First new site record caught in the actinic too, hopefully more to come.
As I’m not trapping any more this month, thought I’d look back on the results. To me personally it appears to have been dire, seemingly low numbers of species and quantity. Just looking at the species count for the month, I’ve noted 207sp. I checked back as far as 2003 and this is my poorest June total in that period. Previous worst total was 250sp last year. I would normally expect 260-300sp in a ‘normal’ season here. I’ve not checked the number of times I’ve trapped or anything else, this is just the baseline species count for the month. Seems to back up my initial thoughts. Be interesting to see how July progresses.
Neil