Spurred on by Dave's earlier post and now Andy's as well, I have come up with some statistics for my garden. I generally only trap once a week, occasionally twice, so my numbers are not of the same order as Dave's and Andy's.
My garden is fairly small, but has 2 mature apple trees, 1 hawthorn, 2 wildlife ponds and privet hedge along 2 sides. It backs onto a railway embankment. Outside the front of the house is a large oak tree, and several other trees (including limes) are nearby. Some 600m from the house is a small tributary of the Thames called Strand Water, which has plenty of reedbeds.
The skinner trap went out on 59 nights - 42 nights with a 125-wt MV bulb and 17 nights with a 30-wt twin actinic light. The amount of trapping in 2017 was very similar.
The total catch for the year was 4315 individuals of 395 species. (In 2017, it was 4433 moths of 375 species.)
The total garden moth list currently stands at 578 species (all recorded in the last 6 years).
The top 10 species for 2018 were Heart and Dart (236), Acentria ephemerella (227), Vine's Rustic (180), Uncertain/Rustic agg. (167), Large Yellow Underwing (115), Riband Wave (96), Epiphyas postvittana (90), Common Quaker (89), Lunar Underwing (74) and Anania hortulata (72).
There were 50 new additions to the garden list in 2018 - 21 macros and 29 micros. I won't list them all, but Jersey Tiger was one that I think quite a few of you added to your list.
Finally, a note on the Box-tree Moth Cydalima perspectalis. It was first recorded in 2016 (5 individuals), followed by 72 in 2017 and 55 in 2018. It would appear to be doing well!
Steve Trigg, Cookham
In Cookham you are quite close to the Cliveden Estate where there's a large amount of box and I suspect the National Trust will be quite worried about Cydalima perspectalis. The moth hasn't really taken off up here at Westcott yet and I've had only the one example in each of the last two years. It'll happen, though, I'm sure. It will be interesting to see what happens to Oak Processionary in 2019 too. The males dispersed far and wide last year (I had three here over the course of a week in the second half of July) but I wonder if the females travel very far at all until they've laid their eggs.
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