Westcott, Bucks

I thought we'd turned a corner on Monday night when the garden catch came to a respectable total of 369 moths of 91 species, but last night's collection was down in the doldrums again at 257 moths of 61 species.  With only two weeks of July left in which to catch up, the garden year-list currently stands at 431 species whereas on the same date last year it had reached 516, so things aren't looking too promising at all now for 2020.  This colder, wetter period has come at what should be the peak weeks for micro species so I'm sure many of them won't appear here at all this year.  Before this blog came into being, Peter Hall used to keep a tally of species reported on the moth sightings pages of the BC Upper Thames Branch website and we always reckoned that only about 100 were left to appear for the year after 1st August.

New for the list here over the past week have been:

(8th)    Rhopobota naevana, Epiblema foenella, Dingy Footman, Dusky Sallow
(9th)    Sandy Carpet, Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing
(10th)  Mouse Moth
(11th)  Lunar Hornet Moth (daytime, to lure)
(12th)  Borkhausenia fuscescens, Acleris holmiana, Anania coronata
(13th)  Aspilapteryx tringipennella, Helcystogramma rufescens, Pandemis heparana, Endothenia marginana,
            Agriphila tristella, Galleria mellonella, Rosy Rustic
(14th)  Ypsolopha dentella, Ypsolopha horridella

Acleris holmiana, Westcott 12th July

Agriphila tristella, Westcott 13th July

Rosy Rustic, Westcott 13th July

Ypsolopha horridella, Westcott 14th July

The Rosy Rustic (13th) is my earliest garden record and, unfortunately, a sign that autumn isn't all that far away now.  Scarce Footman and Common Footman are providing the highest nightly totals at the moment, with Uncertain/Rustic and Common/Lesser Common Rustics close behind.  Grass-moth Chrysoteuchia culmella is starting to wind down and will soon be replaced by large numbers of the Agriphila species.  Looking back over the past few years at what hasn't appeared here yet in 2020, perhaps the biggest disappointment so far has been no sign of Garden Tiger.  This is quite a rare moth in Bucks these days but there seems to be a small residual population locally and two or three have put in an appearance here annually for the past four years.  I suppose there's still time for it to appear but it usually shows itself during the first week of July.

Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks