Cool on the Clay

With the cool nights I haven’t run a trap in the garden (Spexhall, Halesworth) for a week or so and hadn’t read the blog. When I did so, yesterday, I realised I might have missed my best chance of a convolvulus hawk (my touchstone migrant species), so I had a trap on last night. Dipping under 10 degrees C this morning; twenty species in the trap (so less than the 50 or so I had been getting in late August) but including a fair number of migrants – silver y, dark sword-grass, white-point, rush veneer, Ethmia bipunctella and 9 vestals. All the latter very fresh and of a very yellow form, delicately marked with a pinkish-brown line. Much more consistent than in other years when specimens on the same night have been bright pink or with strong brown line. I presume this years they’ve all migrated from the same area at the same time.
Still no convolvulus hawk but there’s plenty of time. Even if the nights are cool there are moths about. Highlight for me last night was a pristine and very beautiful lesser swallow prominent.

Tony Hopkins.

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