For this meeting we went to Juliet Hawkins farm at Milden. This site has some old species rich meadows, hedgerows, SSSI old woodland plus some younger new woods. We decided to trap the younger woodland, as the meadows had just been cut for hay, and Juliet placed her own trap up in the area of SSSI woodland for checking at the end of the session, so we were covering 2 areas. With warm and humid conditions, it promised to be an excellent night for recording. As only Tony and myself had equipment, only 4 lights were put on the rides in the young deciduous woodland. We talked about target species we would like to see at the meeting, one of which was the orange moth, and this turned out to be one of the first moths in to the sheet light! Moths soon swarmed in, keeping us very busy so it was great that Juliet provided some of her own home produced sausages in rolls to keep our stamina up, they were excellent!
All traps were heaving when we checked them, certainly the most number of moths I’ve seen anywhere this year so far. Highlights included: Orange moth (good numbers including some of the brown form, most very fresh), Beautiful golden Y, Archips crataegana (good numbers), Scarce silver lines, Beautiful hook tip (again good numbers of this once quite rare species), Pine hawk, Blue-bordered carpet, Teleoides vulgella, Green arches (one slightly worn individual), Dingy shell, Pretty chalk carpet (a few), White satin, Cochylis rubigana, Ghost moth (female), Poplar lutestring, P.inopiana, Haworth’s pug (2), Eana incanana, Lobster, Lunar spotted pinion (a very fresh one), Clouded brindle, P.conwagana, Blackneck, N. angustella and Triaxomera parasitella. A few moths seen were of great interest: Prays ruficeps (1 – this moth used to be known as only a dark form of Prays fraxinella but has recently been split), Epinotia signatana (good numbers, I’ve only ever seen this moth once before at IGC, never at a group event and never in abundance) and a really melanic Small fan footed wave. My list at the end of the night had 137sp.
We also checked Juliet’s trap in the other wooded area, this too was heaving. I didn’t write a list here but Tony said he had at least 90sp for this trap. Probably the best sighting at this trap was a few Blackneck, not a moth we would have expected to see at this inland site.
Overall an excellent night, hopefully if the weather holds there will be more to come.
Neil
I met up with the Norfolk group on the same night, at Sutton Fen. This was in the hope of seeing a Broads rarity that I have never seen before – Reed Leopard.
This turned up in numbers, at least 10, plus two other species new to me – Silver Hook (about 10) and Lempky’s Gold-spot also abundant.
Good numbers also of Water Ermine & Silky Wainscot.
Our traps were well filled under the heavy cloud, around 125 species.
Brian