We bred this species through from eggs laid inside a moth trap last April. Some six females have emerged so far in the last week and within 20 mins of placing them on Cholesbury Common yesterday, a male arrived. Two others turned up when individual females were placed in two nearby gardens. So we hope there are now at least three females laying fertile eggs in our area. As far as we know, until last year, no Emperors had been recorded on our local patch.
Here are a couple of photos showing the mating pair, a couple of the other females, and one of the pristine males 'the morning after'!
At least, this time, I'm not showing my ignorance of micros by asking daft questions!
Best wishes, David
Nice! It is always more satisfying (to me at any rate) to get males to come to real live females rather than to synthetic lures. Those will be useful records. Emperor is known from just about every 10km square in Bucks so the moth could turn up anywhere in the county, but the records for your 10km square are mostly from Ballinger, further to the west.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dave,
ReplyDeleteW have now had some dozen or so Emperors emerge - all the females first, followed by the males, on average about 5 days later. We have attracted 3 'wild males' to mate with the females. I have recorded all three on irecord. A special time with such a stunning species