First day of Spring

Was it a coincidence that the first day of Spring came with lots of sunshine and a nice warm evening? After spotting the Black-necked Grebe I settled back home with more than high hopes for the moth-trap. Earlier in the month, my friend and mothing guru, Ian G, had loaned me an MV bulb and electrics to try out. I finally got round to picking it up, and of course had to give it a test run (if only to see how much it would annoy the neighbours!). So I got it rigged up for a short while in the early evening from 1915 to 2000. In that time an amazing 8 moths came to the light, far more than I'd normally get (that may sound obvious, as this was an 80W MBF bulb, but it still shocked me). Needless to say I then started to hatch plans!

But for the rest of the night I switched back to my usual Actinic/CFL combo, and the results were still great. 21 moths of 8 species. 3 of these were new for the years so I was very pleased.
The best of the bunch has to go to this stunning Oak Beauty. A joy to behold, and Jordan clearly loved this one!

Four of these Agonopterix species turned up. There are two that are difficult to tell apart (A. heracliana & A. ciliella) but without almost certainly comdemming them to death to check their hindwings it's fairly impossible to tell which is which, so for my list they go down as A. heracliana







Another year first that I've wanted to find was this Early Grey. All these moths are fairly common in any garden, but I think they just have that essence of 'spring' that is in the air at this time of year.

Moth year list = 16

Bird Year list = 123