Orfordness 9th/10th September 2016.

With colder weather and rain forecast for the Saturday night the event was planned to run, it was moved at the last minute to the Friday night as it was due to be a drier warmer night albeit with wind. Sadly this meant that a lot of the regular moth-ers had to drop out, meaning that only 3 of us went over. 9 traps deployed (8 mv plus 1 actinic, including the 2 traps run regularly on the ness). Due to the breeze traps were placed in the shelter of the buildings and scrub, so no generators used to run traps further afield.
In the morning it was found that the wind had picked up slightly sometime during the night as one trap out more in the open had the top blown off it. The other traps placed in slightly more open spots didn’t have a great deal in them, while the sheltered ones did much better. Not a high list of species recorded with 36 in my notebook but to be expected in the conditions and going on the time of year. Commonest moth Square-spot rustic with Setaceous hebrew character and Flounced rustic also noted in numbers. Best moth trapped was a pristine male Convolvulus hawk, one I was hoping we would pick up with the numbers being recorded locally at present. A few other commoner migrants including good numbers of Silver Y. There were a few good moths for the ness too, ones that we would regard as regulars on the mainland but are scarce over there – singles of Herald and Feathered gothic.
After sorting the traps Denice and myself stayed on the ness for the morning, having a tour round with Mike Marsh and Dave Crawshaw looking for larvae and leaf mines. Not an easy task with the very small number of stunted trees over there! Was very much worthwhile as some of the leaf miners will be new to the Orfordness list. First find were a number of fully grown Buff-tip caterpillars on the single Alder tree near the Quay. Other larvae located included Chinese character on Hawthorn and Vapourer on Elm. 14sp of mines were found so not too bad as it is still quite early in the year for them.
Always an enjoyable adventure heading over to the ness and one that will be repeated again hopefully next year in July when White-mantled wainscot will be the target.
Thanks to everyone involved with the night for all their efforts transporting us around and putting up with us generally!

Neil

The Convolvulus hawk moth

The Convolvulus hawk moth

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