Moth Fix

Sheltered woodland is the place to be for moths at this time of year so, in order to get a decent 'fix' for January, last night I trapped in BBOWT's Finemere Wood, Bucks for the usual three hours from dusk.  More than 200 moths came to the MV light in that time, comprising Acleris ferrugana/notana (1), Acleris hastiana (1), Winter Moth (17), Pale Brindled Beauty (86), Spring Usher (73), Mottled Umber (16), Early Moth (11), Satellite (1) & Chestnut (21), while many more Winter Moths were to be seen sitting around on nearby tree trunks along with a solitary female Dotted Border.  There was nothing unexpected and, if anything, I'm surprised that the mild conditions didn't tempt one or two more species to fly, but then I was there for only a relatively short part of the night.

Acleris ferrugana/notana female, Finemere Wood 7th January

Spring Ushers, Finemere Wood 7th January

Early Moth, Finemere Wood 7th January

Acleris ferrugana (an oak feeder) and Acleris notana (a birch feeder) can't be safely separated without resorting to dissection but this will almost certainly be ferrugana, which is by far the more common of the two species locally.  Even though there is plenty of both food-plants at Finemere I've never recorded notana there and most of my records of it are actually from heathland sites.  It was interesting to see the variation in size of Spring Ushers this year and there were two like the midget shown above which had a wing-length of barely 12mm.

Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks