It was quite cold on Tuesday night - the temperature dropped steadily to a minimum of 0.6°C - but more of the wildlife seems to think that spring is here. While I was emptying the traps before sunrise this morning, the recent weeks' chorus of robins, song thrush and great tits was augmented by a goldcrest and a wren; a couple of dunnocks joined in as I finished packing up after the sun was up. The blossom from our plum trees is falling like confetti and later in the morning I saw my first bumblebee in the garden (too briefly and too distantly to identify). My total count of moths reached a new high for 2020, albeit with no new species for the year.
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Common Quaker, Newton Longville
3rd March
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Common Quaker, Newton Longville
3rd March
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The 15 moths were dominated by Common Quaker, which ranged from the dull and the gone-a-few-rounds-with-Tyson-Fury to the very smart. The other four moths were two Hebrew Character and singletons of Clouded Drab and Dotted Border.
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Dotted Border, Newton Longville
3rd March
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One additional moth will have to go into the "if in doubt, leave it out" category. While I was looking in on one of the traps at about 7:30pm last night, a micromoth fluttered into view, paused on the sheet behind the trap for half a second and then flew off again. I didn't even have time to put my hand in my pocket for a pot. Tentatively, it might have been
Agonopterix heracliana, but I'll never know.
Tim Arnold
Newton Longville
Edited: when I first wrote this entry, I thought that the Dotted Border was the first one I'd had this year. This was despite my database clearly showing that I had caught one on 13th February. The photo layout isn't as I intended, but Blogger sometimes has a mind of its own, so I've left it.
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