Last night was cool and very damp: I set up the traps just after sunset as it was supposed to have stopped drizzling by then, but it continued until around nine o'clock, and thereafter the trees above the traps carried on dripping all night. So it was soggy egg boxes this morning and a poor result with a not-so-grand total of 33 moths of 11 species. Either the Lunar Underwings are dwindling now, or they chose to stay hunkered down last night: only 13 of them turned up, but Beaded Chestnut hit its highest nightly total so far with nine.
I had four micro species last night - Plutella xylostella and Epiphyas postvittana, but also what I think are two new species for the garden: Acleris sparsana and Acleris schalleriana. The former is common, but the latter is local and I'm aware that A. schalleriana can be confused with A. laterana and A. comariana. The reason I think it's A. schalleriana is that the costal mark extends almost to the apex, and the book also mentions some raised scales, which are visible in the second photo of the moth, even if many have probably been lost.
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| Acleris sparsana Newton Longville, 4th October 2020 |
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| Acleris schalleriana Newton Longville, 4th October 2020 |
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| Acleris schalleriana Newton Longville, 4th October 2020 |
Hello Tim,
ReplyDeleteYou need to look again at your Acleris schalleriana. It is a reasonably common species in our area (250+ records for Bucks) so no reason why you shouldn't get it, but it is always in shades of grey and brown. What you have there is one of the very many forms of Acleris variegana and quite a smart one at that.
Acleris sparsana is correct, by the way. I'm still waiting for my annual visitor here!
ReplyDeleteOops - thank you, Dave. I was too keen to leap to a conclusion when the description in the field guide listed some of the A. schalleriana forms starting with "Forewing greyish white...", and described the raised scales. I looked at the illustrations of A. variegana, but should have read the text which contains a very clear match!
ReplyDeleteThat's only one new moth for the garden list, then: I have had A. variegana once before (late June 2019), but it was one of the other forms.