I have run my traps twice in the last week. Sunday night was after a warm day and produced significantly more moths than on the first night of the month, but only a few more species. I haven't made a final tally of either night yet, but the 1st produced around 220 moths of about 35 species, whereas the 5th was my busiest-ever September night with around 450 moths of about 40 species.
The difference was largely made up by huge numbers of Square-spot Rustic and Common Wainscot. I am going cross-eyed counting all of the "X", "V" and "I" tally marks in my notebook, but I think there were 177 of the former and 113 of the latter. Neither night produced anything particularly noteworthy, but there were a couple of satisfying appearances:
The 1st produced my first-ever record of Small Square-spot (two, in fact), and the 5th produced five in total. Sunday night also produced a couple of Cypress Pug: I have had these in past years, but feared I would have lost them when I had the two biggest out of five huge Leyland cypresses felled earlier this year.
An almost-exception to the "nothing particularly noteworthy" summary was a late and tatty example of Common/Lesser Common Rustic. This is a rare visitor to my garden - there were none at all in 2020 - possibly because I do very little trapping between mid-July and late August due to absence and other commitments.
One of the moths on the 1st was hard to identify as it was very dark. My provisional conclusion is that it is simply a very dark form of Phycita roborella, but I'd be glad for any confirmation. I'm familiar with the normal form and know that some can be fairly dark, but this one is very dark. There are two versions of the photograph below: one is substantially unmodified; the other has been fiddled with to try to show up any pattern or colour.
Possible Phycita roborella Newton Longville, 1st September 2021 (top: natural colour/contrast; bottom: enhanced) |
Anomoia pumundana Newton Longville, 5th September 2021 |
I have a way of jumbling moth names when I write these posts: I know what I mean to type, but my fingers produce a different name. This post has been edited to correct Cypress Carpet to Cypress Pug.
ReplyDeleteHi Tim,
ReplyDeleteThe Phycitinid needs a proper check so is worth hanging on to. You may well be correct with roborella but there are other obscurely-marked dark species which need to be eliminated.
I've seen no sign yet of Lyonetia prunifoliella locally either, even at the spot in Finemere Wood where I found it last year. However, I'm sure it will be seen everywhere soon enough!