Search for the Sloe carpet – Milden Hall Farm 5/4/2014.

A few of the group met up at Milden Hall Farm last night to have a search for Sloe carpet. This site is very close to the last known previous record (in 2003) to Matthew’s for the species and has some good areas of Blackthorn scrub and hedgerows. A range of mv and actinic traps were deployed around the flowering bushes and we also searched using torches. Alas, no luck with the Sloe carpet, in fact we didn’t see any moths actually on the bushes. In some cases this was certainly due to the breeze blowing around some of them. The traps in the more sheltered wooded areas caught a respectable total of 22sp. Interest included Lunar marbled brown, Frosted green, Oak nycteoline, Water carpet, Purple thorn. Of more interest were some micros caught. One, an interesting looking Caloptilia appears to be a close match for hemidactylella but as it is slightly worn it may need critical examination to be certain. The others are all small purple coloured Eriocrania sp., which in a wood with a lot of Hazel and not much Birch could be chrysolepidella but they will need a gen. det. to confirm.
An enjoyable start to surveys away from our ‘home’ trapping locations.

Neil

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One Response to Search for the Sloe carpet – Milden Hall Farm 5/4/2014.

  1. Brian says:

    I also had an ‘evening out’ at the nearby SWT reserve (Sunday evening) and also found an abundance of micros. It was a very warm but windy evening, so found a sheltered spot on the leeward side of the woods. Lots of Eriocrania, many were the golden-winged D subpurpurella, some were purple-winged E sangii/semipurpurella with yellow tornal spot (lots of birch on site) and a couple looked like H unimaculella with the silver tornal spot. Perhaps keep a couple for further confirmation. Out of 24 species, 9 were micros with E immundana the most abundant. Other firsts for the year were Scallop Hook-tip, Red-green Carpet and Pale Pinion which is a new record for the site but not seen a Frosted Green yet. Light rain set in at 9.45 and spoiled things somewhat.

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