Away trapping

While I haven't stopped going to either Finemere Wood or Bernwood Forest, both of which I trap at regularly throughout the year, the last week has seen first visits for this season to three of the half dozen other sites I plan to trap at monthly during 2022.  The first was what Google Earth suggested would be a promising piece of mature woodland in an under-recorded tetrad on the east side of the Waddesdon Estate, but the mix of trees there proved to be mostly Ash, Beech, Horse Chestnut & Sycamore, not exactly the best combination for moths!  They are all quite old and were probably planted when Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild built Waddesdon Manor in the 1880s.  The understory seems to be mostly Snowberry and Sweet Chestnut, but there is a bit of Hawthorn and Hazel dotted about too so I'll have to wait and see what the site produces.  My visit there on the rather chilly night of 14th April produced just 16 species of which the only one to appear in any numbers was Nut-tree Tussock (41 counted).  Least Black Arches & Dotted Chestnut were nice to see, as were new-for-year Small Phoenix, Common Pug & Scorched Carpet.
 

Small Phoenix, Waddesdon Estate 14th April

The next night saw me make a visit to some private mixed woodland near Lillingstone Dayrell on the edge of Silverstone race-course.  This site has a much better potential for moths thanks to it being long-established mixed woodland with plenty of Oak and Poplar as well as various Conifer species.  I made a couple of visits there towards the end of the season last year and it proved its worth then, including the discovery of a healthy population of Devon Carpet (only the fifth known site for that species in Bucks).  On 15th April, another chilly night, I got nearly 30 species of the expected mix for this time of year although few of them appeared in any numbers, Purple Thorn being the clear winner with 14 of them between the two traps.  However, that total pales into insignificance against a count of 51 between two lights in Bernwood Forest a week earlier - Purple Thorn is certainly having a good season locally!

Some of the Purple Thorns, nr Silverstone 15th April

The third site to be visited was one of my favourite trapping locations in Bucks, the chalk downland at Grangelands not far from Chequers in the Chilterns.  Martin Harvey joined me there and between us we ran four lights, my two on the grassland and Martin's in the adjacent woodland.  You don't expect much on chalk grassland at this time of year anyway, but there was an annoying down-slope breeze and then eventually that huge moon appeared over the hill-side behind us, so it wasn't exactly the most productive of nights!  However, our combined species count still reached the mid-20s with Mottled Pug and Iron Prominent both newcomers to me for the year, although the best moth was this fresh (and rather early) example of Ancylis unculana.

Ancylis unculana, Grangelands 16th April

Last night (18th April) I made yet another visit to Bernwood Forest, my fourth there over the past three or four weeks in search of Scarce Prominent.  Thankfully, this time the moth turned up (in fact 13 of them did) although only to the trap closest to the largest area of Birch that I'm aware of there, suggesting that they don't stray all that far from the larval food-plant.  Some very welcome cloud cover and no breeze meant that nearly 40 species were caught in the usual three hours, including Pebble Hook-tip, Birch Mocha & an early Orange Footman.  Great Prominent seems to be at its peak now in Bernwood because 83 of them came to one of the lights for a total of 101 altogether.

Birch Mocha, Bernwood Forest 18th April

Scarce Prominent, Bernwood Forest 18th April

Orange Footman, Bernwood Forest 18th April

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks