I’ve not been running any moth traps recently, being put off by the cool nights, especially here on the sandy soil. However, I’ve still had my eyes open during the day for anything interesting. Today I was starting the annual hay cut on the acid grassland rough on the golf course, and whilst doing this I disturbed 7 Vestal moths (only one seen close enough to determine the colour form – a red striped one). I only cut a small part of the total area of rough on the site, so I do wonder how many are present over the whole site? Then what about over the whole UK? Must be thousands!
Pushed into second place in today’s sightings (would normally be a top sighting!) was a Hummingbird hawk flying round a Buddleia at work, my 4th sighting this year making it my best year ever for the moth.
Neil
3rd September addition: Continued with the hay cut this afternoon on the site and disturbed 2 more Vestal. It seems the moths maybe prefer to rest up in the more sparser, whispy grass rather than the rank thick stuff as I cut a bit of both types of habitat today and saw no moths in the thick stuff but as soon as I started on the thinner sward there they were.
Once disturbed they soon flew to an uncut area and settled on the underside of a grass stem (see photo), I suppose to look like a piece of dead leaf.