Oak Lutestring

I paid another visit to nearby Finemere Wood, Bucks last night.  There was again no sign of Clifden Nonpareil so I'm convinced that BBOWT's felling of aspen here has had an effect on its colonisation of the wood, but hopefully the moth is around in sufficient numbers now in the local area to be able to try again (I had another one to light at home last night, my third of the season, and we have no aspen at all within a mile of the house although there are plenty of poplars).  However, I did have luck with the other target species at Finemere which was the much-declined Oak Lutestring.
 

Oak Lutestring, Finemere Wood 3rd September

This moth has a patchy distribution in Bucks.  In the south it seems to have a stronghold at Burnham Beeches and there are post-millennium records from other sites in that general area of the county.  In mid-Bucks you'd expect it to be in Bernwood Forest where it was certainly recorded in numbers up to the 1980s but I've been trapping there regularly at the right time of year for more than a decade now and have never found it.  It continues to hang on at Finemere and is probably in one or two of the other (mostly private) blocks of ancient woodland in this area.  I've also seen it at Rammamere Heath on the Bucks/Beds border and in Salcey Forest at the far northern end of the county where it hopefully continues to survive.  There have been one or two garden records of it too (not yet in mine, I hasten to add!) so this is a moth to look out for throughout September.

Dave Wilton
Westcott, Bucks