Pammene suspectana

This is a message from Herefordshire. No records of this moth in the county up until 3 days ago, when former Bucks resident Aaron Woods lured one to the FUN lure in his orchard. It awaits a closer look.  This inspired me to put out 2 pheromone traps in the garden yesterday (12th May), one in my small orchard using the MOL lure and close to 2 large oak trees and one down the bottom of the garden next to a large Ash tree using the FUN lure.  Checks during the day proved fruitless and my last check before bringing them in around 4.15pm showed 3 moths in the orchard using the MOL lure and nothing down the garden with the FUN lure. The 3 adults looked just like Aaron's image posted on the Hereford & Worcester moth blog https://herefordandworcestermoths.blogspot.com/. One went in for closer examination which happened this morning and proved to be Pammene suspectana. If you go into the Useful Links part on this Upper Thames blog you will see the brand new West Midlands moth Atlas link available. We put it there because it can be a great help with checking images and phenology times for you and if you look up suspectana, there's 3 records for the 4 counties up until 3 days ago. We have another specimen from Hereford city too now awaiting confirmation (FUN lure). There's no Bucks records, but this now looks like another moth, like Pammene giganteana, that avoids moth traps and perhaps you can take a look in your garden or woods and see if it is there as well. FUN is supposed to be the lure (I think there is also a specific lure for it) but MOL  looks like it works extremely well. I plan to use these 2 lures regularly over the coming weeks to see what else turns up. Peter Hall

Pammene suspectana: Bringsty Common