A few more moths

 It's the penultimate weekend of the Garden Moth Survey and for a change it was pretty mild.

Determined to outfox the next door Wasps I turned the light off and hauled the trap inside an hour before it started to get light. The plan worked well and as dawn approached I noticed a moth on the doorframe of the utility room. It was something new.

Checking it against the books I established it was a Beaded Chestnut. A bit more research revealed that the species is common, and is very similar to Lunar Underwing, which is also common.

Beaded Chestnut

This is only my third year of moth trapping, and so it's still exciting to peer into the trap to see what's there. I also still experience an unsettling feeling that maybe I am making some fundamental error causing me to overlook something. Learning that Beaded Chestnut is a common moth and knowing that I have recorded quite a few of the confusion species, makes me wonder if I have misidentified some Lunar Underwings in the last few years. Hopefully not.

I only caught eight moths of five species, the full list being: Light Brown Apple Moth 2, Red-green Carpet 3, Double-striped Pug 1, Vapourer 1, and Beaded Chestnut 1.

These were the first Red-green Carpets I had seen since April and they included a particularly green one which caused a flurry of research.

A normal coloured Red-green Carpet

A very green Red-green Carpet

The other notable moth was the Vapourer. It was quite a late one, and also only my second this year.

Vapourer

The light was very poor for photographing the moths this morning, but once the sun came out this afternoon one or two of the above looked ready to leave, so I let them take their chances.