Homefield Wood, Bucks

With the frontal rain (well, a bit of drizzle which is all we actually had) having blown through more quickly than expected I decided to take another look at Homefield Wood near Marlow last night.  Although the wind was quite strong it remained nice and sheltered amongst the trees and there was a reasonable amount of moth activity - just a pity that they didn't include much of interest!  There was no sign yet of Blomer's Rivulet which has been out in Herefordshire for a week now.  Around 40 macro and 20 micro species put in an appearance but only Map-winged Swift, Foxglove Pug, Maple Prominent, Puss Moth & Large Nutmeg are worthy of a mention.  Both forms of Map-winged Swift turned up, which was nice to see:


Map-winged Swift, Homefield Wood 27th May

Map-winged Swift, Homefield Wood 27th May

Earlier in the day I had another look at accessible areas around the incinerator being constructed at Greatmoor, on the southern edge of the Calvert land-fill site.  The chances are that the one and only known Five-spot Burnet Zygaena trifolii colony in Bucks has been destroyed thanks to an access road having been constructed over the best area of bird's-foot trefoil and much of the remainder of the field in which they used to be has been wrecked by heavy machinery.  The only interesting thing seen was a rather worn specimen of the pretty tortrix Commophila aeneana.

Commophila aeneana, Greatmoor 27th May

Best sighting of the day, though, was back home at Westcott where a daisy in the lawn came up trumps once again, this time with the year's first addition to the all-time garden list:  a mated pair of the 'long-horn' micro Adela rufimitrella (or Cauchas rufimitrella as we are supposed to refer to it now).  Interesting that we have none of its food-plant (lady's smock) in the garden although there is plenty in the local area.

Adela rufimitrella, Westcott 27th May

Dave Wilton