First Quarter Results

First quarter garden results are always a mixed bag, very much dependent on the winter weather.  In April 2015 I produced a table of adult macro-moths recorded during the first three months of each year going back to 2006 in order to give a ten-year comparison and to work out how many species would be missed if trapping didn't start here until 1st April (quite a few people don't bother to run their lights during January, February or March).  Micro-moths were ignored because there are so few of them around and Diurnea fagella & Tortricodes alternella are really the only ones which aren't hibernators.  I concluded then that only four adult macro species would definitely be missed (Small Brindled Beauty, Pale Brindled Beauty, Spring Usher & Early Moth) because all of the others either continued flying well into April and/or appeared again in the autumn.  In fact the flight times for Pale Brindled Beauty and Spring Usher seem subsequently to have crept forward and there's now often a chance to see them in December, while Early Moth is just as likely to appear at a lit window as it is to come to a light trap.  I'm certainly not advocating packing away the trap for those first three months each year but I can understand why some people do!

I've continued to update the figures annually since then and have just done so quickly for 2020.  This year's results proved to be a bit of a mixed bag. The total number of individual macro-moths caught came to 405 which is rather below par.  However, 28 macro species were seen, drawn from a cumulative total of 46 which have been recorded here during the first quarter.  28 is actually the third highest total over the now 15-year run of data.  The average currently stands at 561 moths of 23 species.  If anyone is at all interested in looking at the details, the information is available on two sheets of a Google document here.      

Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks