23rd Oct - A poor show

I knew it wasn't worth it...but I just had to try just to prove that I was right. The wind was blowing strongly, and although there was thick cloud cover and warm temperatures the moths did not arrive! Only 3 moths of 3 species. Flounced Chestnut, November Moth and Yellow-line Quaker, so all fairly nice moths, not many caught in the garden for each species. But still I was reminded of what a waste of electricity it was!

 Some people just don't get it!!

The night of a thousand stars

This lovely warm weather is providing all of us moth-ers with plenty of interesting catch results! As it looked good all week I decided to do Tues/Weds/Thurs with Thursday being a slight difference in that I put out the 15W BLB lamp with the 22W CFL clip-on. This seems to have done the trick as I recorded no less than 6 new species!! And some cracking ones they were too...

First came a couple of micros to the white sheet - Tinea semifulvella (left) and Apple Leaf Miner (right)



And then some more autumnal species that for some reason I didn't catch last year, but I suppose that could be down to either trap position (it's now located underneath a mixed hawthorn hedge, as opposed to the middle of the lawn) or the weather? All these moths were in pristine condition. The Yellow-line Quaker (left), Red-line Quaker (right) and the fabulous Green-brindled Crescent (below right)

The last new species for the garden came whilst photographing the catch. I took out a Red-green Carpet that had it's wings folded up as it had just come out of the fridge. I managed to get it to stand on the wall (where I take my photos) whilst still in the pot. I left it for five minutes to relax and sure enough it flopped its wings flat. I took the pot covering it off to take it's portrait...and it was an Autumn Green Carpet!! Brilliant what you miss the first time round when you're rushing to get the trap emptied! EDIT: I've been corrected by the guys at BGM, and this is in fact a Red-green Carpet.