Westcott, Bucks

New for the garden year list over the last week have been Orange Sallow, Sallow & Svensson's Copper Underwing (all 13th) and Mallow & Beaded Chestnut (both 16th).  Lunar Underwing has taken over as 'top dog' in the trap and numbers of both Large Yellow Underwing and Square-spot Rustic have started to tail off.  Last night's collection to the actinic comprised 157 moths of 23 species which seems a fairly typical result now.  They included my tenth Red Underwing of the year and a slightly different form of Red-green Carpet.

Orange Sallow, 13th September



Mallow, 16th September

Red-green Carpet, 18th September

Some local woodland trapping last night didn't produce all that much although five examples of Buff Footman after an absence of several weeks was a little unusual and suggestive of a second brood (Marc Botham and I had one on 23rd October last year).  Epinotia trigonella, Vapourer and Small Wainscot were nice to see amongst the more regular species, while the only moth to get into double figures was Eudonia truncicolella which seems to be appearing everywhere that I trap at the moment.  For the benefit of Mark Griffiths (see below) I've just taken a quick happy-snap of one of the Small Wainscots, admittedly a rather heavily marked example.

Small Wainscot, 18th September

Dave Wilton