ID problems after a busy night

The spell of warm weather gave me hope that Saturday night would be a good night for moths, and so it proved. I ended up with more than eighty moths of 28 species in the two traps. Many of those were putting in their first appearance of the year and five species were new for the garden list, albeit unremarkable.

There are a few on which I need some ID help or confirmation.

I originally wrote down the first species (of which I had caught two individuals) as a Lesser Swallow Prominent due to the strength and relatively short length of the white wedge shape in the tornus of its forewing. Then I noticed that the larval foodplants are silver birch and downy birch, whereas the Swallow Prominent eats willows, aspens and poplars. That gave me some doubt regarding the correctness of my ID: I have three large willows and two poplars in the garden, but the nearest birches that I know of are about 800 metres away. Unfortunately I released the moths before noticing the field guide's mention of a difference on the hindwing. I've checked my photos from last year, and I'm confident that they are Swallow Prominent, but Saturday's moths do look like Lesser Swallow Prominent to me.

Lesser(?) Swallow Prominent, Newton Longville 11 April

Looking up the excellent Atlas of Britain & Ireland's Larger Moths, I realise that whichever species it is, this is quite an early record. Martin Wainwright's collage posted earlier today shows that he has caught what I think looks like a Swallow Prominent.

I assume that the next moth is a Cnephasia sp. and will need to go under the knife for a more precise ID.

Cnephasia sp.? Newton Longville, 11 April

The final two moths have completely defeated me: the first has a forewing length of around 5 or 6 mm, and the second about 4mm.

There were some other things that I found interesting on Saturday night: most of the moths came to the lights within the first 90 minutes of darkness: I checked the traps twice in that period and there were lots of new moths arriving as I did so.  After that, there was a lull and most of the rest came much later (after 1 a.m.), including about two thirds of the Orthosia family. A larger then usual proportion of the moths were found outside the traps: either on the sheet I hang behind, or on the outside of the traps, or on a nearby tree-trunk. And it was quite a busy night for other insect orders: lots of flies, midges and lacewings (of course), a couple of queen wasps and an Ichneumonid, a bumblebee which escaped before it could be identified, a beetle (hopefully to be identified) and two species of caddisfly: Stenophylax permistus and Limnephilus affinis (to be recorded).

Tim Arnold
Newton Longville, Bucks