While on the subject of adventive moths moving out of London, some of you will be aware that from 2018 onwards an ivy-covered wall at the front of Andrew Kershaw's house in Longwick, Bucks was home to the first known colony of the tortrix Clepsis dumicolana to be found outside the capital. A long-standing contributor of moth records to the Bucks database, Andrew and his family sold up and moved away to Norfolk in the autumn of 2022. I've often wondered if the dumicolana colony would survive and on driving past Andrew's old house earlier in 2023 was saddened to see that the new occupants have had an extension built and the ivy is no longer there. The moths were fairly sedentary and didn't really venture away from the ivy, rarely appearing even in his moth trap in the back garden, so it seems almost certain that this colony has been lost. Surely the moth must have turned up somewhere else in our region by now?
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| Clepsis dumicolana, Longwick Sep 2021 |
It turns out I was looking at the wrong house! It is one of Andrew's former neighbours who has built an extension and the ivy on his old house still survives, although it does seem to have been cut back. Hopefully the colony of Clepsis dumicolana still survives there...
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