Thursday 7 August 2014

Wetland species in bone dry habitats

Rather than moan like normal about poor catches and local farmland destruction I thought I'd pass comment on the number of wetland macros that seem to be turning up well away from wetland habitats this year. This was spurred on by my fifth Crescent in the last few weeks in the garden trap this morning. I have also had Twin-spotted Wainscot and Brown-veined Wainscot and Double Lobed has graced the garden trap on numerous occasions - the latter species seems to have been absolutely everywhere this year and in good numbers and other people have commented similarly. Micro wise I have also had Orthotelia sparganella in the Wallingford Rothamsted trap, and good numbers of Limnaecia phragmitella, which as mentioned by Dave W in a past post does wander, but numbers have been greater than normal and it has turned up at most sites I have trapped including several records this year for the garden. I think like Dave W said a while back that this may be caused by warm, dry summers forcing increased dispersal to search for other suitable wetland habitats, but might also represent these species having had a bumper year following the extremely wet winter?

Other moths of interest are few and far between, but  a new site record of Kent Black Arches at Warburg on 1st August was nice, first of year garden records of Crocidosema plebejana over last couple of days and after a peak of Diamond-back Moths a little while back I am now starting to get increased numbers of the probable offspring of other common migrants such as Silver Y, Rush Veneer and Rusty Dot Pearl. White-point second generation also out, but these are almost certainly resident round these parts as I get good numbers of both generation annually. Marc Botham, Benson

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