Saturday July 9 - The heat is on

 There was something of a contrast between my hopeless mothing session at the beginning of the week when the temperature overnight failed to climb above 8 degrees, and last night when it fell no lower than 14. 

There were 23 moths caught on Monday night, and 181 (at least) last night. No surprise really. The only disappointment was the quality on offer. 

I was up for 04.00 and arrived just as a Common Wasp had found the strip light. Once I'd removed both Wasp and light I was able to manhandle the trap into the utility room and shut the door. There was enough daylight to see the moths, but not enough to photograph them. So I withdrew for a bowl of cereal and a cup of tea.

On my return I found that the walls and windows of the room were plastered with moths. It took me four hours to catch and release the escapees, before I could even open the trap to see what was left.

The species total currently stands on 43, and the top five in numbers were the micros: 

Garden Grass-veneer 45

Bird-cherry Ermine 30

Following them were the macros:

Common Footman 26

Coronet 9

Large Yellow Underwing 6

As far as the rest were concerned, the scarcest were Varied Coronet (one caught in 2018), and Chinese Character (one caught in 2021), and the prettiest was Scarlet Tiger.

Varied Coronet - fluttering its wings to blur the shot.

Chinese Character

Scarlet Tiger - the wow factor

In addition to the above, the following were new for the year: Yellow-tail (2), Treble Brown Spot, Pammene fasciana, Acleris forsskaleana, Buff Footman, and Scarce Footman, while Smoky Wainscot, Agapeta hamana, Phycita roborella, and Grey Dagger (2) were new for the year in the garden.

This afternoon I found a micro which was the only moth which was a garden tick, but unfortunately it was also unidentifiable to species. That was Syncopacma most likely to be taeniolella.

Syncopacma (probably taeniolella)

I am expecting the numbers to rise after it goes dark and I turn the utility room light on. I will update if appropriate....and indeed the total moth count went up to 197, and these included three micros which were new for the year: Blastodacna hellerella, Limnaecia phagmitella, and Gypsonoma dealbana.