There are some moths that when you catch them for the first time, after poring through the moth book picking them out, make to hold your breath as you pot them up and save them for their photoshoot. Species like Elephant Hawk-Moth, Chocolate-tip, Green Silver-lines, Buff-tip - all these moths had me skipping round the garden like some crazy moth-induced rain-dancer. So with the anticipation fairly high for last night's trap results I began slowly turning the eggboxes over.
"What cracker did you find?" I hear you ask. What beauty graced my garden last night??
This little fella, not so much a knock-out...more of an over-looker. But in its defence, the Small Dotted Buff did have a very charming trap manner (it didn't try and get away for starters!) and upon further investigation whilst photographing him I discovered that it has a pearlescence found in only a few of the moths species I've caught so far (Mother of Pearl being the prime example of this oystershell-type of colouration). So this little shiny brown chap goes down as number 323 in the Thorpe garden and in addition to this first.
I also had two new for the year - this Udea prunalis, a dull looking micro which as it's name suggests is closely associated with blackthorn (of which there are plenty above my trap) and four Common Wainscots. I was a little dubious as I checked them off to start with, but after photographing all five wainscot species that I caught last night, I decided that only one of them was a Smoky.
I also had my 2nd garden Gold Triangle, although it wouldn't sit still for it's photo and I eventually lost it in the conservatory somewhere! Hopefully it'll turn up in a day or two ready to pose properly. So here's a picture of my first garden record caught on 15th June 2011.
Other stars of the show were this Shaded Broadbar, Light Arches, and Mother of Pearl.
All in all not a bad catch - 95 moths of 38 species (18 Micros; 20 Macros)
Agriphila straminella x 3
Barred Fruit-tree Tortrix
Bright-line Brown-eye x 3
Brown House-Moth x 2
Bryotropha terrella x 2
Bud Moth
Celypha lacunana
Celypha striana x 2
Clepsis consimiliana
Common Rustic agg
Common Wainscot x 4 (New for Year)
Crambus lathionellus
Crambus pascuella x 3
Dark Arches x 11
Dipleurina lacustrata x 8
Double-striped Pug
Dun-bar x 2
Eudonia mercurella x 6
Fanfoot
Flax Tortrix
Garden Carpet
Gold Triangle
Heart and Dart x 10
Large Yellow Underwing x 2
Light Arches
Marbled Beauty
Mother of Pearl
Nutmeg
Riband Wave
Scoparia ambigualis x 6
Shaded Broadbar
Small Dotted Buff (New for Garden)
Small Dusty Wave
Smoky Wainscot
Swammerdamia pyrella x 3
Udea prunalis (New for Year)
Uncertain x 6
Willow Beauty
One of these was this fantastic little micro - Argyresthia brockeella. On first sight it looked black and white - dead straight forward. But when it came to photographing it, it changed its colours from green and white and then to orange and white. Really beautiful...and only 6mm long!! This is an example of why I absolutely love mothing. The knowledge of this particular type of moth was completely non-existent to me three years ago, and to 98% of the population of Britain it doesn't exist. But since starting mothing my eyes have been opened to greater things, and I feel very privileged when these tiny guys visit my garden. 
There was also one other tiny newcomer to the trap, this small Coleophora which turns out to be a Pistol Case-bearer!
