With apologies to those of you who are already bored with pictures of this fantastic species, I'm very pleased indeed to report that I joined its garden record club early this morning with this male found perched under the kitchen windowsill at 6am as I closed up the trap. It was about 10ft away from the actinic light, the first picture below being taken in the light of my head torch. Wonderful. What a year this species is having! It proved to be the garden's 312th macro species of the year, so far.
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| Clifden Nonpareil, Westcott 30th September |
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| Clifden Nonpareil, Westcott 30th September |
Considering how miserable the weather was, last night's catch turned out to be quite a decent one even though overall numbers were down, the other 30 species comprising
Blastobasis adustella (1),
Blastobasis lacticolella (1),
Epiphyas postvittana (1),
Eudonia angustea (1), Common Marbled Carpet (2), Spruce Carpet (1), Lesser Treble-bar (1), Brimstone Moth (1), Dusky Thorn (1), Light Emerald (3), Turnip (2), Large Yellow Underwing (9), Lesser Yellow Underwing (1), Setaceous Hebrew Character (7), Square-spot Rustic (4), Common Wainscot (2), Blair's Shoulder-knot (1), Black Rustic (18), Beaded Chestnut (11), Lunar Underwing (45), Barred Sallow (1), Pink-barred Sallow (1), Sallow (1), Dusky-lemon Sallow (1), Small Wainscot (1), Rosy Rustic (2), Frosted Orange (1), Silver Y (1), Straw Dot (1) & Snout (1).
New for the garden year-list the previous night (29th September) had been Blair's Shoulder-knot and Brick, meaning that there are few macro species left to appear here this year. I would expect to see Figure of Eight, Green-brindled Crescent and Merveille du Jour within the next week or two, followed by the Novembers and Sprawler and then finally December Moth and Scarce Umber (Winter Moth and Mottled Umber were recorded way back in January). I'd be very happy to see Northern Winter Moth, Brindled Green, Tawny Pinion or Large Wainscot as well but they don't appear here every year. Anything else will be a bonus!
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| Brick, Westcott 29th September |
Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks
Well done Dave. The other two Bucks records for this year have been at sites with the larval food plant aspen present. Do you have any aspen nearby?
ReplyDeleteYes indeed, Martin; the closest good supply of aspen is just 1,000m away from the house. Within a radius of 4km there are several woods with plenty of it (four of them are current sites for Light Orange Underwing too). Bernwood Forest, the location of one of the other Bucks fraxini sightings this year, isn't that far away either. There is certainly good potential for the moth to become established locally even if it is perhaps a little early yet to say that it has already done so.
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