Saturday 1 November 2014

Palpita vitrealis

My posts have become infrequent recently. The main reason for this is that I have moved house and no longer have that luxurious garden which seemed to attract in so many moths despite the farmers' best intentions to obliterate all living matter. My new garden in Didcot is well, errrr, not great. Having not seen it once get dark because of the extremely high levels of light pollution I am not wholly surprised but also urban gardens do become rather poor for moths at this time of year so the jury is still out and next summer will be more informative. Another reason is that my out-of-garden trapping has involved trips out of the county, namely heading south trying to catch up with some of these migrant moths that are turning up on the coast with limited success. However, in a rather ironic turn of affairs, on both the nights this week that I headed southwards I returned the following day to check my garden trap to find Palpita vitrealis, a moth I had not seen in this country until this week, along with small numbers of Udea ferrugalis and Plutella xylostella. Resident moths are almost non-existent though with only Epiphyas postvittana showing up regularly in good(ish) numbers. Marc Botham, Didcot 

Palpita vitrealis - 2nd of the week (27th and 30th October) in Didcot

1 comment:

  1. I think you'll find one of those vitrealis had my name on it - decidedly unfair of you to intercept it on its way up the A34!

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