Having broken my wrist I'm temporarily unable to manage my Robinson trap so have been concentrating on Clearwings.
Red-belted, Currant, Red-tipped, Orange-tailed and Yellow-legged so far this year and on 21 June tried for Large Red-Belted using CUL lure between 13.00 and 18.30. No Large Red-belted but I did get a trap full of 52 Red-belted.
I note that Colin Plant advocates cleaning the yellow top and green cage of the ALS pheromone trap to remove any left-over contamination by immersing them in boiling water for 10 mins, before changing to a new lure. What do others think?
Richard Ellis
Chorleywood
I do clean mine between sessions but just use warm tap water. Getting non target species in profusion is an issue with the lures - the Yellow-legged lure usually gets Orange-tailed which puts me off a bit. Once I get the target species I put the lures away for the year.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mark. I used VES lure on 14 June looking for Yellow-legged and got one plus 5 Orange-tailed.
ReplyDeletei'm trying to tick off as many species as possible and, like you, stop looking once the target species has been recorded.
API lure out at the moment trying for Six-belted.
I only have the one ALS trap and I'll certainly try cleaning between sessions using hot water and detergent.
Six-belted is perhaps less likely to appear in a garden unless you've got a fair amount of the food-plant close by because it doesn't seem to stray far from it. Go out to somewhere local with old established bird's-foot trefoil (even on road verges) and you should get it within minutes if the moth is there. You are very unlikely to get Large Red-belted in our area.
DeleteGetting non-target species is certainly not "an issue", it just makes things more interesting. I sincerely hope everyone who uses these lures does physically check the identity of each moth and doesn't just assume what they'll be. These pheromone compounds are all somewhat similar so getting related species to a specific lure is nothing unusual at all. Even more interesting are some of the micro-moth species which occasionally come to the clearwing lures. If you go to the pheromone section of the ALS website you'll find a fairly up-to-date list there of other species which have been attracted to these lures.
I agree with Colin's comments about cleaning if you only have the one trap. I have dedicated traps for each of the clearwing species so it is less of a problem but it is still important to wash your hands if handling more than one lure at a time.