National Moth Night catch up

Moth Trapping Event at Carr Wood 22nd June 2012

This was the fourth trapping session that I’ve held at Carr Wood since beginning in April and although the weather was a little disappointing there were some interesting results from the traps.

As in previous sessions we ran two traps – 1 x 80W MBF Robinson-type and a 15W Actinic/117W CFL combo Skinner-type. These were located on the main footpath through the wood around 150m from the entrance to the wood from Fletcher Street.

The traps were assembled at 9pm and a number of people gathered to meet up for this event with the majority staying until the end at midnight. Many thanks to all those that turned up, it was really great to meet you all! The traps were lit at 2145hrs and the moths starting arriving around 2210hrs, a little later than anticipated. Plenty of other bugs and insects also frequented the traps and sheet, with midges, gnats, some sort of scarab beetle(?) and lots of craneflies.

The final tally was 49 moths which was quite a respectable haul given the cool temperature (it dropped to 10⁰C by midnight), and poor weather Thurs/Fri/Sat morning. Fortunately the gusty winds had dropped by Saturday.

15W Actinic/117W CFL combo trap		80W MBF Trap
Agonopterix arenella	1
		Argyresthia spinosella	1
Angle Shades	1
Barred Fruit-tree Tortrix	1
Beautiful Golden Y	1
		Blastobasis lacticolella	2
		Blastodacna hellerella	1
		Bright-line Brown-eye	1
		Brimstone	2
		Burnished Brass	1
Chrysoteuchia culmella	1
Common Marbled Carpet	1	Common Marbled Carpet	1
Common Pug	2	Common Pug	4
Common Wave	1
Dipleurina lacustrata	1
		Flame Shoulder	1
Freyer’s Pug	1
		Garden Carpet	1
Green Carpet	1	Green Carpet	2
Grey Pug	1	Grey Pug	1
		Ingrailed Clay	4
		Light Emerald	1
Marbled Minor agg.	1
Melanic pug sp	1	Melanic pug sp	1
Mottled Beauty	2
		Nematopogon swammerdamella	1
Prays fraxinella	1
		Pseudargyrotoza conwagana	1
Riband Wave	1
Scoparia ambigualis	1	Scoparia ambigualis	1
		Small Dusty Wave	1
Small Fanfoot	1	Small Fanfoot	2
		White-shouldered House Moth	1
Totals	20		29

All this means that I managed to pick up one new micro (Argyresthia spinosella) but more importantly managed to add 26 species to the Carr Wood List! Great news!
Now for the photos...

Small Dusty Wave

Common Wave

Beautiful Golden Y

Mottled Beauty

Angle Shades

Barred Fruit-tree Tortrix

Various shades of Ingrailed Clay

Flame Shoulder

Brimstone

Light Emerald

Small Fan-foot

Grey Pug

Bright-line Brown-eye

Argyresthia spinosella

Burnished Brass

Pseudargyrotoza conwagana

Could Sunday be a precursor?

Hopefully this Wednesday we will be trapping at work again, and by the looks of the weather it seems like the next few nights are going to be similar. So I put the trap out with great expectations. It certainly had that feel about it - calm, warmish, patchy cloudy. I even got that frisson of a hope that the Elephants might be on the charge, but I was let down on that one.

Lobesia littoralis

Peppered Moth

The rest of the trap contents however, were pretty good with 6 new for years and the one right awaiting confirmation (EDIT: it has been confirmed that this is Lobesia littoralis, my 2nd record for the garden!). Out of the usual array of early summer visitors the stand out inhabitants of the trap this morning were a Peppered Moth, 2 x Small Dusty Waves, Treble-bar, the first Willow Beauty of the year.

Broom Moth

Marbled Minor agg

Flax Tortrix

Celypha striana

This beautifully subtly marked Broom Moth (my 2nd ever!) plus Flax Tortrix, Celypha striana, and a pale version of the Clouded-bordered Brindle. There was also some variety to the Marbled Minor agg. which got me excited but I think they're all just Marbled Minor, and I won't get them chopped up anyway so that's what they go down on the list as!

Brimstone

Red-barred Tortrix

Common Swift

A late, forgotten post

Ooops! With all the excitement of the Charity Garden Party this weekend (from which we raised £1400 for Macmillan Trust and Motor Neurone Disease Association by the way) I've completely forgotten about posting my moth news from Tuesday. It wasn't massively exciting but looks like it marks an improvement in the weather (slightly!?!) and the moths. The day was fairly warm, getting up to 14 degrees and staying around 12 into the evening, dropping to 9 degrees in the night. But the key things was that it was calm and cloudy - the two key ingredients that I'm beginning to understand are vital to a good moth night.
So to the catch - 27 altogether with only two new ones. The first is Dark Arches (oh-no, I hear you mothers groan) but it has to be recorded as it's the turning point in the moth calendar. From now on both this species and the Heart and Dart will rise in numbers to epic proportions (Dark Arches max last year was 42 in a single trap on 25th June - with Heart and Dart on equally high numbers in that trap with 65!).
The other newbie was actually a new one for me altogether - a snazzy little micro called Epiblema cynosbatella. The lovely yellow nose separates it from some similar congeners, and it's a species I saw lots of others catch last year but I missed out. Glad it's on my list this year, as number 398.



These other three are on show here cos they're some of my favourites. Simple as that!

Bright-line Brown-eye

Angle Shades

Freyer's Pug

Two half-decent moth nights

Saturday and Sunday nights were not ideal conditions, but they were DRY! Hurrah! In fact the dry from Saturday night lead onto the very lovely morning walk that I posted about yesterday at Cannock Chase. The evening temperatures were around 12 degrees on Saturday but 10 degrees on Sunday, but given that both nights were fairly similar I decided to run an experiment testing the lights against each other. I ran the 15W Actinic/117W CFL combo trap on Saturday and the 80MBF on Sunday. Same trap, same setup just different lights.

The results were...

Saturday		Sunday
Micros	Macros	Micros	Macros
6	20	5	19

...rather inconsequential to be honest - although Saturday's catch was fairly uneventful (Freyer's Pug, Scoparia ambigualis, Silver Y and Ingrailed Clay being the only interesting moths) the MBF bulb did pull in Poplar Hawk, Pale Tussock, Angle Shades, Scoparia pyralella, Peppered Moth, Clouded-bordered Brindle and Cabbage Moth. So I'm tempted to say that the MBF was more successful, but that's only cos the bigger showy moths grab your attention, don't they!?!

Any way some photos from Saturday first:

Silver Y

Heart & Dart

Ingrailed Clay

Scoparia ambigualis

And some from Sunday:

Angle Shades

Scoparia pyralella
(nice comparison to S. ambigualis above)

Marbled Minor agg.

Foxglove Pug

Peppered Moth

Bryotropha similis (I think?)

2012 Moth Yearlist = right on the verge...99

A proper go at Cannock

This morning we got up early and headed out to Cannock Chase to do a repeat of the trip I had there on Tuesday night. If you read that post you will see that I went in the drizzling conditions from 5pm onwards and managed to find Redstart, Tree Pipit and Cuckoo and came tantalisingly close to a Wood Warbler! Well if the views I had of those birds were ok then the results me and the nipper had this morning were out-of-this-world.
Only a few times have I proved to myself that old adage of "the early bird gets the worm"....one of those was whilst in Kos a few years ago when I spent five days having an evening visit around the salt pans at Tingaki and picking up one or two goodies before attempting an early morning visit (I think it was 5am! On my holidays! God knows how I swung this one past the girlfriend?). There are no words to describe the differences. I literally walked around gobsmacked ticking off Hoopoe, Tawny Pipit, Lesser Grey and Red-backed Shrikes, Marsh Harrier, Great Reed Warbler, Greater Sand Plover, Squacco Heron, Temminck's Stint, Wood Sand, 63 Stone-Curlew in one field....the list goes on. The whole place, the feel, the atmosphere was simply alive. Completely different to the afternoon visits which were, now looking back, lacking in energy (from me and the birds!).
This same difference in the wildlife can also be attributed to Cannock. The weather obviously made the difference too - today was bright and cheerful, sunny patches, actually warm by lunchtime! But the other difference which I think is important at Cannock is the tourism industry. By 9am the place was thronged with mountain-bikers and dog-walkers, horse-riders and families out for the day. This is of course the magic of the place, the way that all these activities can be catered for is a very clever management system developed by the Chase District Council (among many others) but for the birder wanting to get good views of Cannocks speciality birds I heartily recommend getting up early, being the first on site, feeling the Chase wake up to a gorgeous summer's day!

male Redstart

Wood Warbler

uncooperative Spotted Flycatcher

And so to the birds - the only one we missed was Pied Flycatcher. A shame, yes. But when you consider that within the first 300m we'd had jaw-dropping views of 3 Wood Warblers parachuting their song around a birch copse, Spotted Flycatcher at the nest, numerous Tree Pipit, and 4 Redstart I think you'll agree it was worth the effort. We parked at the Punchbowl car park again and followed the main bike track to the Stepping Stones and then along the Sherbrook Valley. It was clear that Redstart and Tree Pipit had territories right along this track, we must have seen and heard at least 7 Redstart in total, and the Cuckoo was heard again in the Valley towards the heath. Brocton Coppice was popular with the Wood Warbler, but were not singing when we returned at 1130 so the emphasis to start early was brought home to me. At the top of the Sherbrook Valley where the track opens out to heathland a pair of Stonechat (another new for the year) stood on guard, and here we kicked a pale moth out of the grasses.

After a short chase we pinned it down and got this awful photo, to prove it was a Grass Wave - my first! We also encountered Cinnabar, Celypha lacunana, Common and Silver-ground Carpet as well as Small Heath and Large White butterflies and numerous bugs and other crawlies and flyers. It really was a beautiful mornings walk and if anyone ever says again "Why do you need to go birdwatching so early?", I'll simply say "if you're an early bird then you WILL be well fed"!