Another night in the woods

Last night it was the turn of Shabbington Wood at the eastern end of Bernwood Forest to receive a visit.  There, much as expected, the moth catch was more than double that achieved in Finemere Wood the previous night, mostly thanks to even larger numbers of Small Quaker.  Nearly 1,300 moths from 26 species were recorded in the usual three hours:  Ypsolopha ustella (1), Diurnea fagella (8), Acleris ferrugana/notana (3), Acleris literana (1), Tortricodes alternella (175), Pammene giganteana (1), Yellow Horned (57), March Moth (40), Brindled Pug (5), Pale Brindled Beauty (3), Small Brindled Beauty (63), Oak Beauty (65), Spring Usher (3), Dotted Border (9), Engrailed (6), Red Chestnut (35), Pine Beauty (1), Small Quaker (673), Common Quaker (66), Lead-coloured Drab (2), Clouded Drab (5), Twin-spotted Quaker (3), Satellite (8), Chestnut (18), Pale Pinion (1) & Oak Nycteoline (2).

Pammene giganteana, Bernwood 10th March

Brindled Pug, Bernwood 10th March

Pine Beauty, Bernwood 10th March

Twin-spotted Quakers, Bernwood 10th March

The lack of Shoulder Stripe was a bit of a surprise because I'd recorded 15 of them at Finemere the previous night, but Tortricodes alternella was still going strong in Bernwood whereas at Finemere it was almost over with only ten seen.  No sign of Water Carpet, White-marked or Blossom Underwing yet at either site but I suspect it won't be long before they're out and about too. 

As it happens I'd tried the MOL pheromone lure in the garden at Westcott over the previous two days but had no takers, so it was good to see that Pammene giganteana (which comes to that lure but doesn't often appear at light traps) was indeed flying now.  Last year I managed to add several new woodland sites for it locally thanks to pheromone traps hung out during the daytime.  The moths usually appeared within a matter of minutes.  

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks   

Humble garden catch at Tilehurst

In the trap last night.

Common Quaker (2) : Small Quaker (1) : Satellite (1) : Oak Beauty (2) : Small Brindled Beauty (3) : Common Plume (3) : and maybe a Dark Chestnut (1) 

Other than Oak Beauty all firsts of the year for me.

Maybe a Dark Chestnut. 

Small Brindled Beauty. 

Small Quaker.

Common Plume.

Finemere Wood, Bucks

I trapped in Finemere Wood last night for the usual three hours from dusk and, as expected for such a mild evening, got plenty of moths (450+).  Small Quaker was out in force (258 counted and they were still piling in while I was packing up).  Small Brindled Beauty (52) was the next most abundant species, followed by Common Quaker (33) and Yellow Horned (25).  The remainder comprised Diurnea fagella, Acleris ferrugana/notana, Tortricodes alternella, March Moth, Shoulder Stripe, Early Thorn, Pale Brindled Beauty, Oak Beauty, Dotted Border, Spring Usher, Engrailed, Red Chestnut, Lead-coloured Drab, Clouded Drab, Satellite, Chestnut, Early Grey & Grey Shoulder-knot.  No surprises but it was good to see such a lot of activity!

Yellow Horned, Finemere 9th March

Shoulder Stripe, Finemere 9th March

Lead-coloured Drab, Finemere 9th March

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks

Dotted Chestnut, Stoke Goldington

 I remember when I took my first specimen to an excited George Higgs, to add to his Willen collection in March 2005. This moth was quite scarce then, I guess much more frequent now.

Crawling into the light

 This overwintered small caterpillar making the effort to climb to the front door lights (1 x actinic and 1 x UV LED), I'm currently assuming is Scarlet Tiger?

Micro from November 2020

 Hi there,

Going through some old photos. Is this an Acleris? And if so, is it ferrugana/notana, which I know cannot be separated visually? Thanks and best wishes, David

Variable Dotted Border

 Two very different examples of the species amongst this year's record haul of over 85 moths on a woodland edge site near Chesham. I had no idea that the brown/beige colouring
could be reversed like this. 28 March moths were on a white door behind the Robinson trap!

Best wishes

David

T. alternella??

 This turned up the other night. Not much to go on, but I wonder if it's a very lightly marked - or worn - T. alternella? Two images of the same specimen. Thoughts?

Best wishes

David

Micro night in North Bucks

It was nice to see a night with more than one micro, with Agonopterix alstroemeria, Agonopterix heracliana, Emmelina monodactyla and Diurnea fagella in various numbers, along with my first Oak Beauty and March Moths of the year.

I'm struggling with a couple micros, however. The first, well-marked, looks akin to the knot-horns, but I can't quite place it. The second, an Agonopterix?, but smaller, darker and more square-winged than the other A. heracliana types in the catch. Could it be a poorly marked purpurea?

Good nights for early March

The last two nights have been quite productive here at Westcott with eight moths of six species to the actinic light on Wednesday (2nd) and 22 moths of eleven species last night (3rd), not bad at all for the first few days of March and it was especially good to see so many micros tempted out of hibernation.  New species for the 2022 garden list comprised Agonopterix alstromeriana, Amblyptilia acanthadactyla, Emmelina monodactyla, Acleris kochiella, Acleris cristana, Small Quaker and Clouded Drab, taking it past 30 for the year.

Acleris cristana, Westcott 2nd March

Amblyptilia acanthadactyla, Westcott 3rd March

Acleris kochiella, Westcott 3rd March

Clouded Drab, Westcott 3rd March

Small Quaker, Westcott 3rd March

This morning (4th) I found a male Bee Moth inside the house, my first indoor moth sighting of the year (and earliest record of that species).  Usually by now I've had one or two Mompha species or Endrosis sarcitrella but they're bound to appear soon enough. 

Aphomia sociella, Westcott 4th March

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks    

Upper Thames on-line Moth Atlas - Photos

Work on populating the species accounts and uploading photos to the embryonic Atlas website continues apace but there are still a fair few macro-moths for which we have as yet no acceptable pictures.  While there will be the opportunity for anyone to offer images to the site when it goes "live", we'd very much like to get at least one photo of each species up beforehand.  A list of those still required is available here on Google Sheets if anyone can assist and this isn't restricted to people living in the Upper Thames area.  Some of these moths are rare or even extinct in our region.  There are also some which are exceedingly common but just don't seem to have fallen in front of my camera!

Original un-tweaked images would be appreciated (we'll do any cropping, rotating or re-sizing that might be necessary).  Photographs taken in our area would be particularly welcome but in many cases we realise that we'll need to use images from further afield.  Please include date, location and name of photographer with each photo.  File sizes really need to be circa 800kb or greater so that there'll still be a decent-sized image left to upload when any cropping has been done.  While in the majority of cases we'll very gladly accept whatever is offered, the preference is for plain backgrounds so that we get a good view of the moth itself.  Arty shots on leaves or pieces of bark generally end up looking just as false as those taken on a plain sheet of paper and those kinds of backgrounds can often distract from the view of the moth itself! 

Thanks in advance for any help.

Dave Wilton

Westcott, Bucks

Moths have continued to come to the garden light over the past ten nights, even during the exceedingly strong winds of Storms Eunice and Franklin, although the only newcomers for the year list have been Small Brindled Beauty (17th), March Moth (21st) and Acleris literana (26th).

Acleris literana, Westcott 26th February

Acleris literana is often a much brighter green than this rather subdued example, but it was nice to see all the same.

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks

Garsington trends 2014-2021

I have finally gone through my records from 2014-2021 to tot up catch by species for each year. Apart from being able to see some trends the other stand out insight was how far out my impression of how common certain species had been in previous years.

In particular I over-estimated previous catches of some of the species which to me were more iconic. So things like Privet Hawk and Buff-tip have been more or less stable rather than in decline as I’d believed before I went back to do the yearly counts.

Looking at previous years I can also see that some species that weren’t common or absent in 2021, had varied also in the past. I’ve also excluded from the analysis those species that were in low numbers to start with.

The ones that look as if there actually are trends are:

Heart & Dart 2021 only 31. (2020 = 179, 2019 = 272)

Treble-lines seems to have quadrupled in numbers in the last 3 years.

Small Elephant Hawk seems to be increasing in the last few years.

Small Square-spot 2014-2017 averaged 20 a year. There were then none 2018-2020. 10 appeared in 2021.

Buff Arches, average 2014-2018 10 per year, since average is only 1 a year.

Riband Wave has consistently declined year by year, 2014 = 64, 2021 = 25.

Flounced Rustic numbers more than doubled for 2020-2021.

Dot Moth has declined, 2014 = 34, then numbers went down, 20219 & 2020 none, 2021 = 2.

White-point, as might be expected has increased. From 2014 = 3 to 2020 = 27 this was more or less a consistent increase. 2021 was 118!

Common Wainscot was more or less stable 2014-2016 at av 50 per year, 2017-2019 it was consistent at 190 per year, 2020 hit 546 and 2021 it was 894. That means it over took Large Yellow Underwing numbers for the first time.

Large Yellow Underwing seems to have declined. Until 2017 the average was around 1,200 per year (2015 went up to at 1,627). 2018 = 832, 2019 = 634, 2020 = 732 and 2021 = 751.

Hebrew Character numbers seem to have halved since 2019, 2021 = 28.

Straw Underwing seems to be increasing, average 3 a year 20214-2017, 2018 = 13, 2019 = 6, 2020 =42, 2021 = 20.

Setaceous Hebrew Character seems to go up and down, lowest was 75 in 2014, 511 in 2018, and 508 in 2021.

 

Other observations

Tree-lichen beauty arrived in 2019, it’s now continued to appear since.

Box-tree moth arrived in 2017 and seems to be increasing.

Clifden Nonpareil also appeared in 2017 and has appeared in ones and twos since.

Dark Arches, Black Rustic, Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, Common Quaker seem to be going down, but had increased previously so it looks as if it might be cyclic.

All of these were caught in a 40  w actinic heath trap. Location consistent and trapping all nights when the weather was ok. Garsington is a village just outside of Oxford and we are at nearly 400 feet. The garden is fairly unkempt with some native herbaceous plants but sadly few trees or bushes. There are trees in neighbouring gardens and close thickets. Some have been cleared for development. The village is largely surrounded by arable farmland.  

Total species caught over the years is about 550(ish).

Herts Micros

 Hi there,

Two micros from near Tring in Herts (almost in Bucks!). I'm thinking that they both might be Agonopterix species - perhaps yeatiana? Any help gratefully received!

Very best wishes

David

Westcott, Bucks

Things are still ticking over here with something turning up on most nights.  Even during last night's gale a Pale Brindled Beauty and a Chestnut came to the light.  New for the year recently have been Oak Beauty (9th), Dotted Border (9th), Hebrew Character (12th) and Common Quaker (15th), taking the garden list up to 20 species so far.

Hebrew Character, Westcott 12th February

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks

Sibford 2021 micros

Having now managed to get my 2021 micro records sorted it turns out that 2021 was my best year for micros in the garden. A total of 249 species were recorded of which 37 were new site records. (Thanks as always to Peter Hall for identifying many of these). A couple of noteworthy records were the Dioryctria species caught in early August and discussed in my post at the time. This has now been confirmed as D. sylvestrella. The record for Elachista albidella caught on 26th July seemed surprising for the location given that it is described as a moth of wet and acid heathland. 

Andy Newbold, Sibford Ferris, Oxon.

Upper Thames on-line Moth Atlas

If you hadn't already heard about it, this is advanced warning that an on-line Moth Atlas covering our three counties of Berks, Bucks & Oxon is in the process of construction by Jim Wheeler (County Moth Recorder for Norfolk) with help from our own CMRs and it will be similar in format to those which Jim has already created for a number of other counties.  There is plenty of work still to be done so the Atlas will not being going "live" for some months yet, although hopefully it will be available for use during this coming season.  The site will initially cover only our macro-moths, but the micros will be added as soon as the data for all three counties has been tidied up to an acceptable level.

The Atlas will be available for anyone to use and the images here are presented just to give a flavour of what will be on offer.

Once a particular species has been selected, as in Orange Swift on the screen-grab above, a map is provided giving the locations of records pre- and post-2000 to tetrad level.  For a small contribution towards the not inconsiderable annual running costs, we hope that you will all take out a "Golden Cinnabar" membership which will give access to more detailed data at the county level, including individual records down to 1km square resolution.

Everyone in our area should find the Atlas to be of great use and we would hope that it will provide those who are recent converts to moth recording with a much better idea of whether a particular species is likely to be found locally or not!  Each species account will also indicate whether or not a photograph of the moth will be required for a record of it to be accepted, or indeed if the moth itself might need to be retained for dissection.  

Funding for the initial creation of the web-site has kindly been provided by BC Upper Thames Branch.

Dead and difficult!

This just died in my conservatory - wasn't there two days ago. Worn and damaged, but is there enough left to ID it? When in the sun - second photo - it shone bright gold! Forewing length approx 10mm.

Many thanks.

David

Ditto with an early Engrailed last night in Stoke Goldington

 

A couple of queries

 Firstly, a very early Engrailed - or am I being fooled by something else?

Then these micros that I'm not sure about - any help gratefully received. I think the first one with hairline white stripes is one of the many forms of Acleris cristana. And maybe Nos 2 and 4 are both Tortricodes alternella? No 3 flew before I could photo its side view, so may be impossible!

Thanks, David

Bernwood Forest

Despite Bernwood being full of Forestry people trying to reduce the massive deer population on site when I arrived at dusk last night, I managed to safely run a couple of MV traps at the eastern end of Shabbington Wood without getting shot at!  In the usual three hours the combined total was well over 300 moths of nine species.  As at Finemere Wood a week ago, the majority were Pale Brindled Beauty and Spring Usher, although numbers of Tortricodes alternella (77 seen) are on the rise.  Small Brindled Beauty (8) is just getting going, as is Oak Beauty (4).  The only noctuids recorded were Satellite (1) & Chestnut (13) with no sign of any Quakers here yet.      

Oak Beauty, Bernwood 8th February

Meanwhile, back home at Westcott the slightly warmer conditions brought a double-digit count of moths from five species to the actinic light, including Satellite and Oak Nycteoline which were new for the 2022 garden year-list.

Oak Nycteoline, Westcott 8th February

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks

Earliest Grey?

Actually it isn't, because the earliest record of Early Grey in Bucks is unlikely to be bettered for quite a while (4th January 2011 by Richard Ellis in Chorleywood!), but last night's example here at Westcott is next in line and only the second in the county to have been seen during the first two weeks of February, the other being on the 14th in 2005 by the late George Higgs at Willen.  It is really a moth of March and April, but in Bucks there are now ten further records during the second half of February, all post-millennium, so its start date does seem to be creeping slowly forwards.

Early Grey, Westcott 7th February

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks

Ectoedemia heringella

While out surveying for Brown Hairstreak eggs on the Waddesdon Estate in mid-Bucks this afternoon I had a brief look at a couple of small holm oaks and, needless to say, they were absolutely covered in mines of Ectoedemia heringella.  It is not often that you can see more than 20 active leaf-mines of any species on just one leaf!

Mines of Ectoedemia heringella, Waddesdon 3rd February

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks

Finemere Wood, Bucks

A few hours with an MV trap in nearby Finemere Wood last night produced a good "fix" of moths for this time of year, with well over 200 seen, although there was nothing unexpected.  The majority of the count was made up by Pale Brindled Beauty and Spring Usher, the only other species seen being Tortricodes alternella (17), Small Brindled Beauty (2), Dotted Border (1), Early Moth (1), Common Quaker (1) & Chestnut (8).

Small Brindled Beauty, Finemere Wood 1st February

Dotted Border, Finemere Wood 1st February

Common Quaker, Finemere Wood 1st February

With such a mild evening for the time of year I was expecting one or two more micro species and perhaps an early Oak Beauty or two, but I'm sure they'll appear soon enough.

The overnight actinic light in the garden produced four moths but none that haven't already been recorded here this year:  Agonopterix heracliana (2), Acleris schalleriana (1) & Dark Chestnut (1), along with half a dozen examples of an early ichneumon wasp which I would previously have called Ophion obscuratus.  

Dave Wilton Westcott, Bucks

First Query of 2022

First ones of the year for me last night.

Oak Beauty, Light Brown Apple and a rather grey nondescript micro.

Any ideas please would be welcome.