Tuesday July 19 - Hot moths

 What a scorcher. I kept my powder dry until Tuesday night, the last uncomfortably hot one. A night of record temperatures following a day too hot to go out in. My plan was to wait until the heatwave broke to minimise the discomfort (for me and the moths) of hours of painstaking identification which I knew would follow.

And the results are in. Complicated by my visit to College Wood earlier in the month, my year-list has reached 200. You'll be relieved to hear that I'm not going to list all 69 species I caught, that's 331 moths of 69 species. It's a record garden count to go with the highest temperature (19 degrees C) I have ever trapped in.

My app played it's part, but it often created confusion and was sometimes overruled both by me and by MothIDUK, who I also ask to double-check the difficult ones.

I was left with four lifers; Scarce Silver-lines, Eucosma campoliliana, Eucosma cana, and Endotricha flammealis the latter probably the scarcest of them.

Scarce Silver-lines (one of two)

Eucosma campoliliana

Eucosma cana

Endotricha flammealis

I also have one iron in the fire. The only Pug I caught look pretty dowdy, so to save time I consulted the app. That gave me a 90%+ suggestion of Golden-rod Pug. I checked the photo against the books and it still looked plausible, but I also discovered it's another rare one and that some (mainly melanistic ones) cannot be identified without the dreaded genital determination. Well that wasn't happening to this moth and so I've referred an image to David Brown to see whether I can count it.....and he's just given it the thumbs up.

Golden-rod Pug

Out of the remainder, there are a few honourable mentions. The Gold Triangle, and a Teleiodes vulgella were my first since 2018, two Slender Brindles were only the second and third for the garden, and a Box Tree Moth was also my second.

Gold Triangle

Slender Brindle

Finally, a quick mention of some birds. While I was messing about with the trap on Wednesday afternoon I became conscious of some screaming Swifts and looked up to see about 30 to 40 in a mass high above. This is probably my largest count this year.