The group’s first ‘official’ meeting took place at the new SWT reserve at Old broom, Risby, a site that could have good potential as it has a mix of woodland (containing a number of large Oak pollards), scrub and grassland. A few of us met up before the start time to have a look around and search for larvae/day-flying moths. Beating the various tree species produced a few larvae of the commoner species found at this time with Mottled umber, Winter moth and Spring usher the most numerous. Saying that, I would have expected more of these given the time of year so maybe the season is running late for those too like it seems to be for the moths. Of more interest were Grey shoulder-knot and Black arches larvae (one of each) and a Sharp-angled carpet disturbed from vegetation.
After meeting up with the other arriving recorders, we placed 6 mv lights within the woodland and waited for moths to arrive. After half an hour nothing had come in and it started to feel a bit cool. Looking up at the sky revealed that the cloud cover that was present on our arrival at the site had disappeared. A few moths did start arriving but it was very slow going. A check of all the traps revealed the same. By 11pm we decided enough was enough and with the temperature down to 8 degrees we packed up. Final list of moths at light in my notebook only 20sp, what a contrast to the previous night. Best moths seen were a couple of micros – Incurvaria oehlmanniella and Alabonia geoffrella.
Hope next time we visit this site the conditions are better.
Neil