Berkshire county moth checklists again - another update for micro-moths

The other day I posted a link to the Berks Moth Group resources page, from where you can download the updated checklists of Berkshire macro- and micro-moths. I was aware that the micro-moth list was incomplete, because of the species listed in Brian Baker's 1994 book that have never made their way onto the county database (the macros were added some time ago but we never completed the micros).

So I started going through the book to add any missing species to the checklist, expecting to find no more than a dozen or so additions. But I had completely under-estimated just how many species had been recorded in 'historic' times but not more recently.

I've now added all the Baker species to a new version of the micro-moth checklist, and this has taken us from the previous total of 991 micro species (of which 75 species had not been seen in the 21st century) up to 1,086 species (of which 168 species have not so far been seen in the 21st century). If you had already downloaded the 24 September version of the checklist please discard that, and use the 27 September version instead.

The additions include some migrant species that were seen once over a hundred years ago and never again (e.g. Evergestis extimalis, Marbled Yellow Pearl), and some smaller and harder-to-recognise species that were recorded occasionally in the past but seem to have dropped off the radar. An example of the latter is Elachista luticomella, Yellow-headed Dwarf, which was recorded eight times between the late 1800s and 1985 but not since, although it is a widespread species that could well survive in the county.

This has been an eye-opening exercise, and I wish I had done it years ago! The challenge now is to see how many of the 'missing' 168 species we can find again.

Evergestis extimalis (from the Netherlands, not from Berkshire!).
Photo by Bj.schoenmakers via Wikimedia.
Recorded once in Berkshire, at Bradfield, around year 1900.