SMG field meeting – Great Martin’s wood, Bentley 26/05/17.

3 moth-ers attended this first meeting of the year. 4 traps (1 actinic) were placed along one of the woodland rides leading down to a large grassy clearing. There are a good mix of trees within this wood, with Aspen, Beech, Oak, Birch and a few pines close to the trapping spot we chose.
It was a warm evening so it wasn’t too long before moths started to appear and we were kept busy recording right from the word go. About an hour after setting up the owner of the wood, his wife plus a French family that were staying with them joined us to observe some of the catch. It was good that we had plenty to show them including crowd pleasing species like Cream-spot tiger and Lime hawk. They went away after a while suitably impressed with the moth fauna of the wood.
By the time we called it a night at 2am we had amassed an impressive 110sp. Notables among this list included: Poplar lutestring, Incurvaria oehlmanniella, Beautiful Golden Y, Brindled white spot, Cream wave, Lobesia reliquana, Pammene germinana, Alder moth, Cochylis nana, Coronet, Red-necked footman (2 – almost certainly a resident population within the wood rather than these being migrants), White-pinion spotted, Pseudotelphusa scalella (probably best moth of the night, a scarce micro found in other woods close by. No photo sadly as it evaded capture!), Ancylis laetana and Cydia cosmophorana.
We also had a few species that I would say are early: Rosy footman and Large yellow underwing.
Overall a very enjoyable and successful first recording meeting, hopefully more are to come. Also nice to see a good number of moths about after the terrible year last year.

Neil

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