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| Dark Sword-grass, Westcott 27th November |
Last night's collection was rather smaller thanks to all that wind and rain but December Moth (3), Winter Moth (4) & Scarce Umber (1) still appeared. The December Moth total here has now reached 41 this season which is nearly double my previous best of 22 in 2017. After a concerted effort over the past couple of weeks I'm now only a month behind with record input into MapMate so I'll soon be able to check how other species have performed, but I think it is going to be difficult to find very many garden moths which haven't done well in 2018. I suspect many will have been helped as much by the preceding hard winter as they were by the glorious summer, so let's hope we have another 'proper' winter to look forward to!
Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks
My twin-30w actinic was out last night on the lawn (in the wind and rain!) and attracted 9 December Moth and 1 Turnip Moth. While this afternoon I found a Tachystola acroxantha in the kitchen - a late addition to the year list.
ReplyDeleteIt has certainly been a good year for moths, but at the same time there have been some noticeable absentees from my garden. This is only my 6th year of trapping, but the list of moths below have all been annual regulars to the garden until this year, when I didn't record a single individual -
Figure Of Eighty, Canary-shouldered Thorn, Small Emerald, Marbled Beauty, Dot Moth, Herald, Dusky Sallow, Large Wainscot and Small Square-spot.
Of course, they may have been on the wing on nights when I didn't have the trap out (I only trap once or twice a week) but even so I would certainly have expected some Marbled Beauty and Small Square-spot as these have been pretty numerous in the past. Perhaps their larvae suffered from an absence of their foodplant during the dry hot summer?
I've now managed to do a quick comparison between 2018 and all previous years at Westcott. Looking purely at surprising absences of expected macro-moth species, there actually seem to have been only two:
ReplyDeleteNutmeg & Shears.
Interesting that they're closely related species which over-winter as a pupa and both have two generations locally.
Others which I thought might perhaps have turned up but are irregular here anyway included:
Lime Hawk-moth, Grey Pine Carpet, Phoenix, Sloe Pug, Foxglove Pug, Tawny Speckled Pug, Scalloped Hazel, Small Brindled Beauty, Dotted Fan-foot, Small Fan-foot, Beautiful Golden Y, Tawny Pinion, Broad-barred White & Varied Coronet.
It is all a bit of a lottery really, depending very much on local habitat and how frequently one traps. An absence in any one year is not necessarily anything to be concerned about. Here are some notes on those you mention, Steve, with the 2018 Westcott totals in brackets:
Figure of Eighty (11) exactly the average but down from an unusual high of 29 in 2017.
Canary-shouldered Thorn (21) slightly above the average which is 17.
Small Emerald (7) above the average which is 3.
Marbled Beauty (10) exactly the average.
Dot Moth (18) very slightly below the average which is 19.
Herald (12) best year ever although only slightly above average which is 7.
Dusky Sallow (90) best year by far, previous high was 61 and average 26.
Large Wainscot (6) slightly above average which is 2.
Small Square-spot (29) well below average which is 264.
Small Square-spot is a cyclical "boom and bust" moth here with recent peaks in 2008 (649) and 2016 (864) and is currently almost at the bottom of the trough again. Going on past experience it'll pick up once more in a year or two.
Many thanks for the detailed reply Dave. I like the idea of a "boom and bust" moth. I can't give you any counts of my own as yet, as I have still to get this year's records into my Mapmate database. However, I do know that a reasonable number of Shears did make an appearance in my garden.
DeleteOf the other moths in your list, 7 of them definitely found their way into my garden trap. As you say, a bit of a lottery, and it would be very boring if we all trapped exactly the same moths all the time.