A welcome oddity!

I could barely believe my eyes when I saw this on the conservatory wall close to the actinic trap last night!  Until this year you could count the number of Netted Pugs I'd seen on the fingers of one hand but now I've had two already in 2019.  A smart female in Homefield Wood a couple of days ago, already illustrated on the blog, and now this male as a first-timer for the garden at Westcott.

Netted Pug, Westcott 27th May

It is an oddity because we don't seem to get the larval food-plant out here in the Vale of Aylesbury.  Red Campion yes, but not Bladder Campion which is really a plant of calcareous soils and the BSBI database has no post-millennium records of it for my 10km square.  Of 130+ Netted Pug records for Bucks there have only ever been three or four north of the Chilterns so this suggests a wanderer from the chalk.  It becomes macro number 434 (and the 35th species of pug) on the garden list.

     Catches over the past two nights have been much reduced thanks to the weather but that hasn't stopped the invasion of Treble Lines and a few first-timers are still appearing.  Eyed Hawk-moth came in on the 26th, while last night the Netted Pug was accompanied by plume Platyptilia gonodactyla, Common Carpet, Small Phoenix and, like Alan in Tackley, a Shears (a common moth which strangely failed to appear here last year).  I also had my second garden Small Elephant Hawk-moth of the season - no sign here yet of its larger relative!

Platyptilia gonodactyla, Westcott 27th May

Shears, Westcott 27th May

Small Elephant Hawk-moth, Westcott 27th May

Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks