First new garden species of 2019

I was very happy to welcome moth species number 972 to the garden at 4.15pm this afternoon.  Having taken a few clearwing pheromone lures out and about with me yesterday and getting nothing at all for my trouble (as seems to happen almost without fail!) I almost didn't bother, but at mid-day today I decided to hang out three lures in the garden.  From those in the freezer I chose FOR (for Red-tipped), MYO (for Red-belted) and VES (for Orange-tailed and Yellow-legged), put them in three separate pheromone traps and left them to it.  Nothing happened in the first four hours, but shortly afterwards while mowing the lawn I noticed some activity around the FOR lure and saw a clearwing enter the trap.  A quick check confirmed that this was indeed a Red-tipped Clearwing coming to the correct lure, a first record of this species for the garden!  It seemed to be a rather worn individual because the red 'belt' on the abdomen was almost non-existent (it is actually slightly clearer in the grotty first in-trap image than it is in the second).  The white outer "tail feathers" are a noticeable feature of Red-tipped, something which isn't at all clear in the picture of this species in the field guide.

Red-tipped Clearwing, Westcott 22nd May

Red-tipped Clearwing, Westcott 22nd May

Nothing had come to the other lures by the time I brought them all in at 6pm.  Red-tipped is the fifth clearwing species for the garden.  Perhaps this year I'll finally get Hornet Moth too, which uses poplar trees only a couple of hundred metres from here.

The pheromone traps are something of a god-send.  I bought some from the manufacturer several years ago and thankfully they are now also available from entomological suppliers such as ALS because they cut down the amount of waiting around which one has to do.  Some species don't hang around the lures for long once they realise it isn't a real female.

Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks