With warm winds from the south and thunderstorms moving across from France a trap session was arranged at Bawdsey picnic site to try and catch some migrants that may have been brought up with the weather.
On arrival it was found that it was a bit breezy out on the salt-marsh area so this reduced the number of lights operated as we had to place them out in the sheltered picnic site only. 5 lights run, 3 125w MV plus 2 30w twin actinic. Moths were very slow in coming in, despite the fact it was warm, something I see Keith noticed on his trapping session the same night. May have been due to the clear skies to start with. Cloud moved over about midnight with a slight increase in moths coming in including salt-marsh species. Then, at 1am the first shower started so we sheltered in the cars for a short while. At 2am it really started to throw it down with rain so once there was a brief lull I decided to put my traps away and head for home, weaving in and out of the huge puddles on the roads.
What of the moths, were there any migrants? 1 Cydia amplana, 1 Silver Y and a few Plutella xylostella, so only a few noted. Other more interesting moths to me included: Agonopterix purpurea, Tree-lichen beauty (at least 15 noted), Marbled green, Ground lackey (a few), Epermenia chaerophyllella, Sandhill rustic (a few), Saltern ear, Gypsonoma aceriana and Platytes alpinella. 120+ species noted.
Neil
I noticed this when 3 of us ran the traps on 29th July at Burgh St Peter hoping to find White-mantled for the 3rd year in a row. It was a perfect evening, exactly the same day as a year ago but the results were very different. Only 140 species recorded as opposed to 175 last year with many completely missing including W-m Wainscot and Brown-veined. Comparing the records for this years and last, many early summer species were still going strong at this time last year due to the late season whereas this year they seem to have totally finished probably because of the early season.
Maybe this accounts for the reason why most of us are experiencing low numbers even in very good conditions, at a time we expect to be the peak of the season.