Tuesday, 5 February 2019

Back to the Moths...

After a warmish day which saw off the last of the snow, it was highly likely that the first part of last night would produce something before the temperature hit zero degrees again, so I ran the twin-30wt light inside our conservatory.  Sure enough, the moths started to appear at the windows soon after dark and by 10pm I'd had Pale Brindled Beauty (11), Spring Usher (1) & Chestnut (1) along with ichneumonid wasp Ophion obscuratus (1).  The only subsequent additions during the night were further singletons of Pale Brindled Beauty and Spring Usher to give a final total of 15 moths - not a bad result in the garden after two weeks off, even if there was nothing new for the year.

Westcott, 4th February
Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks 

2 comments:

  1. I like the idea of sitting in a nice warm conservatory counting the moths as they land on the window. You must be very good at identifying moths from their underwings!

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  2. Yes, it is a lazy way of mothing! Actually, I do go outside every couple of hours and pot up those on the windows so I get to see the top-sides of most of them. One or two have occasionally landed on the roof glass which is a bit more problematic to collect from but they've always been geometers and at the moment their shapes are all quite distinctive.

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