After a moth-free couple of weeks due to the weather I was pleased to identify a Buttoned Snout that my wife had found in the bathroom this morning. I assume that it had been hibernating somewhere in the house over the last few months. My first record of the species too.
The latest Emoth Newsletter from Butterfly Conservation is now available. If you don’t receive a copy of this via email then I have uploaded a copy here. There are a few items of interest : the National Moth Recorders Meeting in February, the State of Britain’s Larger Moths 2013 report, National Moth Recording Scheme update, recognition awards for some moth recorders and details of the latest BC membership offer.
Tony
With my moth trap yet to make an appearance this year, I’ve had Winter Moth on the window but a Double-striped Pug in my hallway on January 11th was quite a surprise! UKmoths mentions that it can be found on the wing as early as January in mild winters. This one seems to have nipped indoors with the onset of colder weather!
Good mothing for 2013.
Steve G
Been running a single 125w MV trap in the garden a few times recently on these mild evenings, and been picking up small numbers of moths, mainly the same species as I’ve seen before. Still seeing Mottled umber, and getting regular small numbers of Spring usher, Chestnut and Pale brindled beauty.
Now turning cold for a while so I doubt I’ll be trapping till it warms up again.
Neil
I’ve finally managed to sort out the problem that the new version of the moth guide was having. This had been holding up progress on getting the new version into more general usage. The problem was to a certain extent within the toolkit I use and a recemt update has cleared the problem. So it’s back to full steam on developing this now.
The new guide can be found here.
There is still plenty to do to get it fully functional and there are a few bits of buggy behaviour (no help and some pop up panels don’t position correctly). However, this version has been ‘compiled’ so it should load faster than the previous beta version.
There’s also new versions of
These pages tend to work better and faster in Firefox and Chrome rather than Internet Explorer, although I’ll be tweaking performance as part of ongoing development. There will probably be a lag first time round as the pages load from the web server but revisiting pages should be quicker with browser caching.
Tony
Thought the mild spell would bring more moths than it has but non-the-less there has been a good diversity. 7 moths in total has been the best nights catch. Species have included one addition to my site list Acleris hastiana, others:- Plutella xylostella, Acleris ferrugana, Pale Brindled Beauty, Early Moth, Mottled Umber, Chestnut, Dark Chestnut and Angle Shades. Brief colder spell due now then hopefully warm up again.
As others have reported the Winter Moth seems to be over. I have also been getting a lot of Dor Beetle and Great Diving Beetle.
I went out to Tunstall Common last night to have a look at a couple of the periodic larval survey sites and to do a rough check on numbers and at what stage the larvae were. One of the sites had quite a few larvae that were found reasonably quickly but the second site now has a light bracken covering. Here numbers of larvae were few and only in those areas still free of bracken. This latter site has in the past produced large numbers of larvae but previous experience has shown that larval numbers are low in amongst bracken even when the underlying grass sward seems unchanged.
All but one of the larvae were still quite small and readily identifiable by the chocolatey coloured underside. A few other larvae were seen included Large Yellow Underwing, Square-spot Rustic and Angle Shades.
Tony
Good to see the new year unfolding! I tried the garden MV on 2nd, which produced one winter moth. Last night it started cool and clear, but dawn was mild and cloudy. Results; three mottled umber and one early moth (the earliest I’ve seen).
Like others, I too put out 2 traps (125w MV plus twin 30w actinic) last night up in the woodland around the work-sheds at the golf course. With it being so mild I did expect to see a few moths, and I was not disappointed. 5sp, 43 moths. Full list below:
Mottled umber – 10
Spring usher – 26
Pale brindled beauty – 2
Winter moth – 1
Chestnut – 4
Wanted to run a trap in the garden for the first time this evening but decided to give it a miss as the sky was clear at dusk and it felt cooler than the previous night. Hopefully it will be cloudy tomorrow night so I can have another attempt.
Neil
Just a quick reminder that the indoor meeting is not far off, just under a month to go. The venue is the same as previous years at Bucklesham Village Hall. Doors open at 1.30 and we’ll start at 2.00pm. Further details will be on the web site shortly (although I’m trying to finish off/fix the latest version of the new moth guide at the moment).
All are welcome to attend and it’s free! The success of the meeting is dependent on members bringing along a variety of material to display and talk about – so please try and bring something along if possible. There’s no fixed format for presentations, either Powerpoint, picture files or even movie files – most tend to revolve around what recorders have themselves found of interest in the previous year. Exhibits are also welcome and something to look at during the tea break. If there’s not enough to keep us busy you could have to sit through my moth quiz!
Tony
