As it was a mild night, perhaps the last of the year, I decided to put my trap out.
By late evening I was in a quandary. There were moths in the trap and on the fence, but the weather forecast was for heavy rain around dawn. I decided to turn the trap off and log what I could see. The downside of this is that photos taken under the house lights or torch light are never very good. This is a pity because I found eight moths of five species, four of which were at least new for the year.
The full list was:
The last named moth was a very worn example of whatever it was, and my photo was especially blurry so I decided to leave it in the pot until morning and have a closer look at it then. Unfortunately it must have been on its last legs because this morning it was dead, and I'm still not sure which species it was. My money is on Red-line Quaker based on what I could see last night, which would be a first for the garden, but it could also be a Yellow-line Quaker or a Brick which would both be new this year.
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| December Moth |
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| Winter Moth |
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| Mottled Umber |
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| Red-line Quaker |
As the Agrochola has had the misfortune to die, this does at least mean that its identity can be resolved by the recorder and his microscope.
It's a shame that my photo was so awful and that the moth was so worn. Nigel S examined and dissected the body under a microscope and discovered it was indeed a Red-line Quaker.
This is supposed to be the commoner of the two late autumn Quakers, but the only one on my garden list had been the other one, Yellow-line Quaker. A couple of moth-ers had suggested from the photo I had posted on Twitter, that this 2020 moth was actually a Yellow-lined, so its nice to have its actual identity confirmed.
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