First decent night of the year brings 1200th species to IGC.

Friday 22nd May was forecast to be a good night for moth recording, so I went all out here at IGC with 4 traps – 2 in the garden and 2 around the worksheds (3 125w + twin 30w). Plenty of insects including good numbers of moths found in the traps in the morning for the first time this year for me. One trap running under the Oak woodland canopy had noticably less moths in but loads more chafers as seen before here. List so far for the night from all the traps just under 100sp, with a couple more idents to do. Best capture was the single Tawny shears in one of the garden traps, a new site record and species number 1200 for the IGC lepidoptera list!
Other moths of note here included: Brindled white spot, Pine beauty (still going), Argyresthia trifasciata, Alder moth (3), Red-green carpet (2), Miller, Silver Y (1, first for year), Ancylis mitterbacheriana, Seraphim (4, all different forms), Early grey (another sp still going) and Incurvaria oehlmanniella. Even though it was a warm night, some of the commoner species of moths like Treble lines, Orange footman and Heart and dart were seen in smaller quantities than I would expect for the time of year, be interesting to see if they get going more in the near future.

Neil

Tawny shears

Tawny shears

Alder moth

Alder moth

This entry was posted in Sightings. Bookmark the permalink.