Late September at IGC – nothing to get too excited about.

Despite the nice mild autumnal weather this week, moth numbers generally appear to have been low with me. Not trapped every night but when I have I’ve recorded on average 20sp (using the 125w MV and the 30w twin trap). Between 50 – 70 moths in total. I would have to check previous years but this seems a bit on the low side. Interesting that others are reporting Setaceous hebrew character as one of their common species, I’ve had none at all this week and before that I was only seeing 1-2 a night.
Moths of minor interest have included: Black rustic (first for year), Brown spot pinion (again, rare here this the only record so far this year), Orange sallow (a few), Red-green carpet (2 so far, first of the autumn), Sallow, Barred sallow (singles, both first for year) and probably most interesting for me a very dark coloured Dioryctria simplicella. Only ‘migrant’ (if you can call it that as it is more likely locally bred) a single Silver Y. Large yellow underwings more common in the actinic trap at the moment, numbers are going down though as are numbers of Square-spot rustic.
My Ivy patch is only just starting to come into flower, once this is out fully hopefully I’ll get better numbers of sallows etc.

Neil

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