Early August at IGC – a record breaking night.

Traps continued to be very busy a lot of the time at the start of August here, and haven’t caught up on entering the data, sorting photos etc for the period so can’t comment too much on results yet. Certainly the night of the 1st was exceptional here, with 170+ species in a trap at home and one at the worksheds. Now I’ve entered the data for this night I recorded 250sp between the 2 lights, beating my previous record here (again with 2 traps) of 220sp. One new moth that night, a Double lobed. Numbers of species and moths seem to be dropping off now, not surprising really considering the time of year but still some good stuff to come hopefully. Wasps now becoming annoying though, attacking the trap contents and making sorting the catch more of a challenge. A few Hornets coming in too to spice things up more!
A few observations: underwings not around in large numbers (like Raymond states in his posting). Not as many Silver Y’s here as what the coastal stations are reporting with between 10-20 seen a night here, probably due to dispersal. Tree-lichen beauty now regular and must be breeding locally, I’ve seen it every night I’ve trapped in August so far with my highest count of 3 in one night. Good numbers this year of White-line dart and Straw underwing. Turnip has only just appeared for the first time this year this week in my traps. Other migrant moth species (as has been reported across the country on the Atropos website) have been in very low numbers with only odd sightings of Dark sword grass and N.noctuella, a few more Plutella xylostella but they are probably locally bred.
Trapped on 2 of the Moth Night nights (trapped with the group at Oulton marshes on the other night). Only tiger I had was Ruby. 8th brought in 140sp in 2 lights, with highlights including Square-spotted clay, Chevron, Scorched carpet (rare here), Prays ruficeps, Dark spectacle and Ectoedemia atrifrontella. 10th not as good with 118sp in garden traps highlights included: Bucculatrix nigricomella (new to site), Trifurcula squamatella, Magpie (only my second ever record, last seen in 2002) and Caloptilia populetorum.
There has been some discussion as to whether July 2013 was as good as July 2006. Now I’ve entered all my July records I can say species wise this year wasn’t as good as 2006, as I had 490sp then and recorded 450sp now. But it was still an excellent period of recording! Be interesting to compare the years at the end of 2013, as certainly the first 6 months of this year were abysmal.

Neil

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