This time of year there is nothing much in the garden, so I take my lights to the nearby woodland and use the 40w actinic run from the car inverter rather than run the generator. The inverter plugged into the 12w socket gives me enough power to run the 40w actinic placed on the sheet plus one other low wattage bulb, usually a 30w low energy giving out 1700 lumens which I suspend above the sheet on a tripod. This provides a soft yellowish light and this suspended bulb has the effect of drawing in the moths that then come to the actinic on the sheet and it also gives me some light to work by.
By way of variation, I purchased a 25w daylight BioBulb which gives out a very white light at 1750 lumens. I ran both these bulbs last night, first the 30w low energy and had a lot of Pale Brindled Beauty that came in and fluttered around the actinic, a few T alternella with just one Spring Usher. After an hour I changed the bulbs and ran the new daylight eco-bulb along with the actinic, within 10 minutes there were another 10 Spring Usher sitting on the sheet and a lot more alternella. Maybe just a coincidence, or further proof that different species are more attracted to different lights? I will continue to experiment.
Brian
I find this sort of experimenting very interesting Brian. When you use a sheet with different light sources it removes the possible impact of different trap designs. I am trying different trap designs with varying lights. In the last two years I have found that a 125W MV on a robinson catches the micros right down to the nepticulids (and many of them) whilst a twin actinic on a Skinner never caught any nepticulids and few micros but was good for larger moths especially noctuids and Hawk-moths. So I designed a robinson type trap of small stature with a 40W actinic. This also rarely took micros and did take larger moths despite the reduced size. This year I have one I am putting a twin actinic on a robinson trap to see how that does and have purchased the 20W actinic/blacklight that runs straight off mains to see how that pans out. This is a compact so if the issue is that the actinic tubes are not a sufficiently point source (rather than overall lumens) of light I shall get around that. I shall look forward to more of your reports on this.