Milden Hall Farm 10/04/2015 – Don’t believe the hype.

With a warm evening forecast a few of us decided to get out and about trapping for the first time this year. We went to Milden Hall farm, a site with a lot of Blackthorn in its hedges and also in an area where Sloe carpet used to be recorded. Things started to take a bit of a downturn en route to the site – just beyond Hadleigh the roads appeared to be wet. There hadn’t been any rain at home and none in the forecast either.
3 mv lights plus 2 actinics put out close to the Blackthorn. Like Brian commented about his night, seemed very slow going with not much coming in and even not much flying around whilst searching with torches. Felt very cool waiting round the sheet for things to come in, where was the warm weather we were promised? Called it a night at 11pm with 13sp on my list (one of those was a larval record of a LBB yellow underwing feeding on Dock). Best moth of the night probably the single Shoulder stripe. Probably only around 10-15 moths in each of my 2 traps. Sheet light did better. My guess is the rain coupled with a clear sky killed off the numbers of moths flying.
Back home it was still dry and around 10 degrees, so I had better hopes for the 2 traps put out in the woods at IGC. See my next message to see if I was correct!

Neil

This entry was posted in Field meetings, Sightings. Bookmark the permalink.