Start of October at IGC – what a turn-around!

After worrying about a general lack of moths in both my traps and on my Ivy patch at IGC at the end of September, the beginning of October has brought in a welcome change with good numbers of moths seen. Yes, there have been warm conditions with southerly winds that have resulted in some migrants appearing, but I wonder whether with the resident species the spell of rain we had caused them to emerge. Before it came I wasn’t really seeing too many sallow moths, but now there are plenty!
I’ll report on the migrant moths first that have turned up here in the last few days. The first hint that things were getting going for me was turning over a egg carton on the 2nd at the work-shed MV trap and finding a Convolvulus hawk sitting there, making the Large yellow underwing next to it look tiny! Only my second site record (first in that other great migration year 2006). On the stormy night of the 3rd, I caught 2 male Four-spotted footman in the work-shed trap, the first record for the site. Pleased to get this species as I missed out on the invasion in 2006 as I was on holiday in Hungary at that time. I caught another male on the 4th in my garden MV trap. Also on the 4th, in the work-shed trap I caught 4 Vestal. Searched carefully around the trap that morning but didn’t find any at rest in surrounding vegetation, they were all on or in the trap. Also had the odd scatter of the common migrants like Silver Y, Rush veneer, Plutella xylostella. Seeing how many migrants have been turning up around the country in recent days, does make you wonder how many millions of them have actually come over if the small sample of our moth traps are picking up good numbers?
Resident species appearing have included: Deep-brown dart (2 on 2nd only ones so far), Flounced chestnut (2 so far), Merveille du jour (now regular), L-Album wainscot (again regular now), Beaded chestnut (first for year, a dark one 3rd), Red-line quaker (now regular), Agonopterix umbellana (3rd), Lunar underwing (numbers have increased on these warm nights), Mallow, Green-brindled crescent, Red-green carpet (high count of 20 in garden trap on 4th), Barred sallow (high count of 12 on 4th in garden trap), Large ranunculus and Orange sallow (1 on 4th).
I’ll report on the Ivy searching results in my next blog post.

Should be a few more nights of decent weather before things change midweek with north winds and a significant drop in temperature forecast.

Neil

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