Thursday July 25

Its not often it takes me two days to write a post, but there's a reason. To be more accurate there's 483 reasons (at least). I refer to my inaugural Morton Bagot moth trapping session. It was quite a night.

Thursday evening began with a bit of birding. I popped down to the flash field on the back of the UK's hottest ever day (until next year probably). It was a bit dull if I'm honest, a couple of Green Sandpipers, and 26 Lapwings. I did at least see the Kingfisher heard last Sunday.

So on to the mothing. I struggled across a couple of George's fields to the small copse jutting out from Bannam's Wood where he suggested I could site my trap. After a bit of a struggle in fading light I got the trap up and stepped back to the realisation I had forgotten the egg boxes! What a professional. 30 minutes later I had returned from home, stuffed them in, and plugged it in to the light sensitive battery. It came on immediately. Phew.

Now I know I was supposed to hang around until the wee small hours, swishing away with a net and periodically peering into the trap. Actually I don't know this, but I get the impression that that is what is generally done. What I did was go home and get a good night's sleep.

The hot night produced several moths in the bathroom, including a new pyrallid species, but I'll tag those onto the end of this post.

I arrived back the following morning, relieved it was not raining, and marched to the trap. It was full of moths, and indeed the surrounding area also had loads crawling about. The next six hours were somewhat manic, back-breaking (I must bring a chair next time), and often confusing. Very early on I "lost" my only pencil and had to go to the farm to borrow a pen. I found the pencil in a reference book almost as soon as I got back.

Moths galore

I enclose the above photograph to convey some idea of what I faced. It shows just one of the eight egg boxes, and you need to bear in mind the the other side of each box contained a similar number.

I don't propose to list every moth species here, but they are all detailed in the 2019 Moths at Morton Bagot page. I can begin however by listing the top 12 in terms of numbers. The catch was dominated by the grass moth Chrysoteucha culmella, also known as the Garden Grass-veneer.

Garden Grass-veneer - 286
The Uncertain/Rustic - 43
Large Yellow Underwing - 15
Smoky Wainscot - 13
Dun-bar - 10
Agapeta hamana - 9
Lesser Yellow Underwing - 9
Riband Wave - 9
Clay - 8
Double Square-spot 6
Ruby Tiger - 6
Common Rustic ag - 6

I normally try to distinguish the moth called the Uncertain and the very similar Rustic, but a high proportion were rather worn and so I didn't bother. The Uncertain is far commoner in our garden, and I think they dominated here, but some may have been Rustics.

I had expected to see a large number of new moths, but in fact most of the ones I saw had occurred at some point over the last couple of years in the garden. There were some new ones though, and potentially a couple of scarce moths.

The first one which I knew was something I had never seen before was a Brown-line Bright-eye, in fact I caught three of them.

Brown-line Bright-eye

In Warwickshire Moths it is described as widespread and fairly common. Another tray contained an extremely attractive micro called a Brown China-mark.

Brown China-mark

This is a micro in name only, being about the same size as many Carpet Moths and Waves. As far as I am aware it is also not a scarce moth.

Shortly afterwards I spotted a Pinion sp and assumed it would be a Lunar-spotted Pinion (the only species of Pinion I had seen in my garden) so I photographed it and moved on. It was only later that I realised it looked more like the much scarcer Lesser-spotted Pinion.

Lesser-spotted Pinion

What I should have done was check its underwing (how I'm not sure), or at least measure it (forgot my ruler), however I am hopeful that JS or DB will confirm it from the photograph. The species was formerly quite common in Warwickshire, but the ravages of Dutch Elm Disease decimated the population and it now hangs on in a few isolated pockets, and Morton Bagot isn't known to be one of them.

Another tray contained a cryptically marked moth which had me very confused for a long time. I thought it might be a moth called Confused, until a trawl of the Internet came up with the more plausible identification of Straw Underwing.

Straw Underwing

This moth is described as widespread and fairly common.

Not so my last moth of interest, and this time I was alive to the possibilities and photographed it upside down in order to demonstrate it was not the relatively common Yellow-tail (I caught one of those too), but the much scarcer Brown-tail.

Brown-tail

When seen the right way up, this moth is basically white and indistinguishable from the Yellow-tail. The Moths of Warwickshire lists eight 20th century records, but they are now annual with, for example three records from two sites in 2018.

It took the entire morning to go through the trap. It also contained a wasp (just one!) and quite a few earwigs and beetles. Judging by the evidence of several half-eaten moth corpses in the bottom of the trap, some of the latter were carnivorous.

I heard a variety of woodland birds, and a distant singing Yellowhammer I'm delighted to say.

Back to garden, the new one was Acrobasis consociella, and new for the year were Cloaked Minor, Single-dotted Wave, and Dun-bar.

Acrobasis consociella

Birding will resume on Sunday.

Postscript: David Brown has confirmed both the Lesser Spotted Pinion and the Brown-tail.