Two more for the Garden

With the final chance for some February records and with the temperature holding up above freezing, the actinic trap was run overnight last night here at Westcott and managed five moths of five species.  Continuing this year's trend, an Early Grey was indeed a little early (my first February sighting).  The others were all Orthosia species of which Small Quaker was the only newcomer to the 2016 garden list.

Despite February's long period with cold nights the garden has so far produced 17 adult moth species (4 micros, 13 macros), a significant improvement over last year's end-of-February total of 11 (2 micros, 9 macros).  To date, this year the totals are identical to those of 2011 when I got my best ever garden result for the first quarter of the year (11 micros, 26 macros by the end of March).  With moths appearing ever earlier, it will be interesting to see how things turn out for 2016.

Early Grey, Westcott 29th February

Small Quaker, Westcott 29th February

Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks