Grangelands, Bucks

A change of scenery was called for last night so, with permission from BBOWT to survey there again this year and with the police at Chequers informed, I headed to the wonderful Grangelands nature reserve at Cadsden - it is always more pleasurable sitting on a Chiltern hillside with a view rather than simply staring at trees all the time!  I haven't trapped there quite this early in previous years and wondered if the chalk grassland might be sufficiently large to support Northern Drab but unfortunately there was no sign of the beast.  Over the usual three hours I ended up with 215 moths of 21 species between the two lights, of which Small Quaker (29), Common Quaker (46) and - somewhat surprisingly - Chestnut (40) were the most abundant.   I had a double digit count of Red Chestnut along with a single putative White-marked which was so worn and bedraggled that it will need dissection to confirm.  Early Thorn, Engrailed and Nut-tree Tussock were out in some numbers, a rather early Waved Umber was nice to see and one of the traps was visited by what I thought was a particularly smart form of Twin-spotted Quaker, but otherwise there was nothing to shout about.

Waved Umber, Grangelands 31st March

    

Twin-spotted Quaker, Grangelands 31st March

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks