A Blog for moth recorders in Bucks, Berks and Oxon
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Tuesday, 20 May 2014
Pod feeders
Fairly good night in garden last night with lots of first for years for garden. Included a nice trio of seed pod feeding moths with Lychnis, Campion and Marbled Coronet. First Birds Wing was nice too. Numbers of White Ermine now consistently in the 20's closely followed by Shuttle-shaped Dart. A few Diamond-back moths kicking about, but as I've said in a previous post I suspect these are resident in the nearby rape rather than migrants.Same with Silver Y which are starting to appear at dusk along with the Common Swifts and occasionally in the trap. Other species of note, but not as such new, is Puss Moth which has been quite a story so far for me this year. In my garden I have managed almost 20 individuals over the last week now. I've been marking them before release so I can distinguish which are newcomers and have been catching them with or without assembled females, with another freshly emerged male out last night alongside the return of a previously marked one. Last Saturday evening I had no less than 10 (all unmarked) to an assembled female/light trap combination. That was whilst I was out with Dave W at Pitstone catching a lovely male Puss Moth amongst the great catch we had there. Sunday night I was catching up with my friend Ross in Kent (who used to live round here and provide many interesting records from Didcot) and we caught 5 male Puss Moths to an assembled female all between 12 and 12:30. There are several reports of Puss Moth on this blog and elsewhere, it's great to see such a fantastic moth having a good year - I didn't see any last year and usually only see one or two if I'm lucky anyway. Marc Botham, Benson
Benson is about 18 miles south of here and in similar habitat yet Campion, Marbled Coronet and Bird's Wing would be new to my garden list. Send them north next time you get them, please!
ReplyDeleteI'll try my best :). Our garden is surrounded by White Campion with some Bladder Campion not far away too and then lots of red Campion in hedgerow bottoms not too far away. So Lychnis, Campion and Marbled Coronet are fairly regular. Even had Tawny Shears last year or year before as well. Birds Wing I can't explain but I had quite a few last year - an odd moth. I imagine I too won't be getting these Campion feeders in my garden so much in the future as the other side of the hedgerow that runs the 1km either side of our house is being pulled out this year and replaced in the same manner as the other side - a short neat hedgerow (1 foot high) with mon-species lawn grass either side mown once per week. the new hedgerow is also sprayed with herbicide underneath and fed with fertiliser. That should about eradicate anything useful from the whole area along with our nesting Yellow wagtails that turn up each year and nest in the crop margin next to the hedgerow. Any plants escaping the hedegrow into the farmyard are sprayed continuously with herbicide so no refuge there either and my garden, although a fair size cannot possibly harbour sustainable populations of all those moths species. Next door neighbours could help by doubling the size but they are more in the farmer mould and mow their lawn weekly and cut their hedges monthly so unfortunately they won't be. I need to make the most of 2014 because I have a strong suspicion that 2015 onwards is going to see moth numbers plummet locally :(
ReplyDeleteBad news about the hedgerow. We need Butterfly Conservation or BBOWT to stake a claim on it before it gets destroyed!
ReplyDeleteThat would be great. Unfortunately our farmer is not even under ELS and I have to keep on relatively good terms with him as I rent our house off him. I've tried to show support of the few good-ish things he does but I'm losing patience, especially when he say things to me like 'You know how they all bang on about Grey Partridge being rare, well i can show you one over here'. True to his word there are Grey Partridges, there are also Corn Buntings, yellow Wags, barn Owls, Yellowhammers and Linnets, but they are all hanging on, not thriving, and every next step he takes takes them one step closer to disappearing. And most of it is just to make things look neat, that's it. It actually costs them more money an time to keep it that way. The council are as bad as they have to pass it for him to be able to go ahead.
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