More signs of life

Before last night, I had run my traps on six nights in 2020. I've been running two at the same time in different parts of the garden: one has a 15W actinic strip and the other is my self-designed c. 13W LED light. I alternate the lights between the two parts of the garden.

I had had two blank nights.  Across the other four nights, I'd caught a total of nine moths of four species (Pale Brindled Beauty, Early Moth, Common Quaker, Dark Chestnut). Last night looked like the last chance to run the traps for a few days, but the temperature was forecast to drop down to +1C.  In the event, the temperature remained at about 5C until 01:00 and then steadily dropped to 3C by 04:00, with only a brief drop to 1C before climbing again. So it wasn't as cold as I had feared it would be.

It turned out to be a good night: between the two traps I had a total of seven moths of five species. Pale Brindled Beauty and Common Quaker showed up again, but I got three new-for-the-year species: Chestnut, Dotted Border and Hebrew Character. Nothing unusual about those, except that on entering the records into my database, I discovered to my surprise that the Chestnut was the first one I've had at home in the 18 months that I've been trapping. I've had one at the end of September at a site in Northants, and one in France between Christmas and New Year.  I have had Dark Chestnut on five occasions here at home, but I don't think I've been confusing Chestnut and Dark Chestnut - for example, I posted one here on 4th December, which Dave confirmed was Dark Chestnut. Anyhow, I was pleased that in one night, I got more species than I've had all year so far.

Dotted Border, Newton Longville 13th February

Hebrew Character, Newton Longville 13th February

Chestnut, Newton Longville, 13th February

By the way, I've been experimenting with photographing the moths on "graph paper" - the dotted lines are at 2mm intervals.  In the past, I've forgotten to measure some moths where I've been uncertain of the ID, so I thought that I'd start taking my photographs against a background where I could measure the forewing length from the photograph.  However, I don't think it does much for the aesthetics of the photo, so I'll revert to a plain white piece of paper for normal shots, and switch to the graph paper if I'm unsure of the ID - if I remember!

Tim Arnold
Newton Longville, Bucks