Saturday June 30

Last night a single moth made it into the bathroom. But it was a new one.

It was almost certainly a Grey Dagger, and I am happy to accept it as such. However, there is a much scarcer species called Dark Dagger which cannot be safely split without genitalia examination.

Probably Grey Dagger

Meanwhile, with no word from my chosen bee expert, I have been trying to work out what the bees in the bee hotel are. I have come up with a theory. The leaf-cutters may be Patchwork Leafcutter Bee Megachile centuncularis. The female shows an orange comb under the abdomen, while what I took to be the male showed only a small amount of hair on the tarsi of the front leg.

If I have got that right, this rather messes up what I thought the sharp-tail bees were. I think they are Dull-vented Sharp-tail Bees Coelioxys elongata. These are supposed to parasitise mainly Willughby's Leafcutter Bees  Megachile willughbiella (although it sounds like not exclusively so).

Anyway, here is my evidence.

Female sharp-pointed bee thought to be Coelioxys elongata

A day later I have reviewed this theory and after obtaining further evidence have discovered it is completely wrong.

Friday June 29 - everything else

Inevitably the moth trap also attracts other insects. To me, moths are hard enough, I do not have the time, patience, or equipment to start trying to work out what all the flies, water-boatmen, and beetles are. Even a ladybird was passed over as I looked for moths.

The only things that attract some attention are caddisflies, and I only look at them in case they turn out to be micro moths.

Caddis-fly sp

This one had me fooled, its wavy antennae leading me astray before JS put me right. He catches "thousands" of caddisflies, "bastard things" as he succinctly put it.

Friday was distinctly hot, and as Lyn and I sat in the dining room at lunchtime, we were interrupted by a damselfly which was repeatedly trying to fly through the glass of the dining-room window. It was a female Blue-tailed Damselfly and thus a garden tick. I dashed out to get a better look.

Blue-tailed Damselfly

Whilst spending the day in the garden, I was largely ignoring the birds, except to shoo Robins away. However that species was, I think, responsible for a broken egg I found on the lawn.

Egg

Now I have to admit that, for a birder, I have a profound ignorance of egg identification. However, although it seemed incredibly small, I do think this is a Robin's egg. Precisely what its presence means is also a mystery. Have the Robins fledged and the shell removed by the parents, or was the nest robbed by a predator and the egg discarded as we might casually drop a nut shell? I haven't seen any juvenile Robins yet this year.

Finally, the bee hotel which I nailed to the southern side of the shed a few years ago, is now occupied. To my excitement, two species are involved, but to my consternation I don't know what they are. One is a leaf-cutter bee, and the other is its parasite, a sharp-tailed bee.

Leaf-cutter bee with leaf

What could this bee?

Female sharp-tailed bee

Female sharp-tailed bee

I have been peering at the paintings and photographs even Steven Falk's excellent Bee field guide, and I've even tried to follow the keys he has written, but I get the impression that to make any real progress you need to examine their undersides, so for the time being they remain a mystery.

Potentially exciting though, because none of the sharp-tailed bees appears to be common.

Friday June 28 - macro moths

Actually, yesterday's macro moth story began on Wednesday morning. On the way back from the paper shop, newspaper in one hand, a litre of milk in the other, I stepped on a large green moth. Luckily for the moth I didn't put my full weight down as I just realised it was a moth and not a leaf at the last second. It fluttered from under my foot apparently undamaged and I chased it from the middle of the road to the curb. I couldn't pick it up so I continued home, grabbed a pot, and returned on the double.

It was a Large Emerald, and I was able to bring to the garden for a quick photo session before I left for work.

Large Emerald

I have the species on the house list from several years ago, but it has not featured in this blog before.

Scroll forward to Thursday morning. As usual I had a quick look at the wall of the house as I turned the trap off. I immediately saw a Coronet, and a similar looking moth which I supposed could also be one. In fact, a quick bit of research revealed it was a new one to me, a Varied Coronet.

Varied Coronet

Also on the door was the first of three Double-striped Pugs, and above the door the first of seven Riband Waves. These are very common moths, and I regularly record them in the bathroom every year.

Riband Wave

A second look at the doorframe produced another common moth which was new for the year. This one was Common Footman. I have certainly seen them before on occasional moth trapping events, but I can't recall having seen one here before.

Common Footman

Their numbers rose steadily as I found several more  in and around the trap, and eventually reached nine.

I finally turned my attention to the trap, and after scrutinising micro after micro, I pulled out an egg box containing a female Ghost Moth.

Ghost Moth

My only previous experience of this moth concerns white lekking males fluttering in the fields at dusk at Morton Bagot in the days when I used to go after work. Actually I had no idea what the  moths were, but when I described their behaviour Craig Round got in touch to tell me what I had been seeing. Today was the first time I had had a proper view, and was the first female I had seen. The moth is one of a small group which emerge without the ability to feed. Their mission is to breed and die. Sadly, this one was to fulfil the last part of its mission rather sooner than it, or I, had intended. In attempting to keep the moths safe from Robins I had placed the cartons containing moths in the entry passage beside the house. The Ghost Moth did not stay there and I found it in the jaws of a spider.

Egg cartons continued to reveal moths; a Pale Mottled Willow, 15 Heart and Darts, a Rustic, five Uncertains (including one I thought was a Rustic until JS put me right). On the other side of the trap I could see what at first sight you could have been forgiven for thinking was a large orange slug. But I knew what it really was. I had never actually seen one before but the Drinker is an extraordinary looking moth, one that stands out in the books.

Drinker

This one was a male, more orange than the larger female. As soon as I had removed it from the box the cartons revealed another prize. A Poplar Hawkmoth. Although this is my third hawkmoth in the garden this year, the species is supposed to be one of the commonest.

Poplar Hawkmoth

With hindsight I should have photographed it on the apple tree where I released it, as it blends in very well with the egg box.

The remaining egg boxes revealed a Flame Shoulder, a Heart and Club, a Marbled Minor ag, and a Dark Arches. I identified all of these straight away but a later review of my photographs of the latter convinced me it was something else. Once again JS had to come to my rescue.

Heart and Club

Marbled Minor ag

Dark Arches

No one said it would be easy.

Friday June 28 - micro moths

It's amazing what fun you can have with wildlife without even leaving your back garden.

Its been properly warm both during the day and at night this week, so I put the moth trap out on Wednesday evening with considerable optimism.

I awoke early brimming with anticipation, and as expected, found myself knee-deep in moths. In fact there was so much to look at and puzzle over, that I have decided to produce three posts to cover the same two days rather than one very long one. The subjects are; micro moths, then macro moths, and  finally other creatures (not moths).

So on Thursday morning I was slightly alarmed to discover that the trap and its surroundings contained a considerable number of very small moths. Some were reasonably familiar; two Bird-cherry Ermines, five Codling Moths, a Diamond-backed Moth, seven Crambus pascuellae, four Chrysoteucha culmellae,  a Bee Moth, an Aleimma loeflingiana, and only my second Marbled Orchard Tortrix.

Marbled Orchard Tortrix

Another was unfamiliar from this year, but has been identified in the bathroom in a previous year, a Red-barred Tortrix.

Red-barred Tortrix

The rest were completely new to me. All I could do was try to photograph them (with mixed success)  and then work them out later.

Phycita roborella

Crassa unitella

Gypsonoma dealbana

Eudonia lacustrata

Pammene fasciana

Bud Moth

Out of the moths shown above, in all cases I only saw either one or two, apart from the Eudonia lacustrata, of which I caught seven. To be perfectly honest, the Bud Moth was found in the bathroom on Thursday evening and identified this morning.

As usual I sent all my photos of "new" moths to JS, and he agreed them all (apart from one I will come to in post three, which was not even a moth!)

I also sent him a photograph of one I knew couldn't be identified from a photograph because it came from a group called Coleophora which can only be safely identified through the examination by experts of specimens. The reason I sent it to him was that I was extremely pleased with myself for having successfully photographed it through my hand lens.

Coleophora sp

Quite a few moths escaped before I could examine them, the micros seem to be much less dozy in the morning than the macros.

My recent email correspondence with JS has led to one unexpected finding. I do not, as I had thought, live in Worcestershire. Actually I do, but the moth recorders use an older form of unit called a vice-county. It turns out I live in the part of Redditch which lies within VC38 (Warwickshire). So the birds belong to Worcestershire, and everything else to Warwickshire.

As if life wasn't complicated enough.

Tuesday June 26

Its the early part of the week and the nights are getting intolerably warm. Perfect for moth-trapping, or it would be if I didn't have to go to work in the morning.

Instead I have had to rely on the bathroom window to usher in a trickle of moths. Two nights ago I caught my first Willow Beauty of the year. Quite a large and impressive moth, but one I record every year even without a moth trap.

Willow Beauty

Last night a tiny micro was potted in the bathroom and a larger micro in the bedroom. This morning I had a brief surge of adrenalin when I thought the second of the above was a Nationally scarce macro, before I saw its underwing and I realised it was just a Green Oak Tortrix, not even new for the year.

The first moth, however, was new for the year (but not for the garden). It was a Blastodacna hellerella. They were both surprisingly photogenic when I released them from the pots.

Green Oak Tortrix and Blastodacna hellerella

I wish they would all pose this nicely.

Saturday June 23

My regular readers (both of you) will have noticed that this blog has been getting very mothy lately.

In an attempt to redress the balance I set off for what was intended to be an hour of looking at dragonflies and butterflies at Ipsley Alders. Unfortunately the decision was made in haste and I forgot to take a spare camera battery. So after photographing a handful of species I was obliged to return.

Before that happened I added Ringlet, and amazingly Small Tortoiseshell to the butterfly year-list. The fact that it has taken me so long to see a Small Tortoiseshell is partly down to a lack of effort, but also reflects their continuing decline. In past years I would expect to note one in the garden during the spring. Today's insect was probably newly emerged.

Ringlet

Small Tortoiseshell

I also saw a couple of Small Whites feeding on the vegetation next to the pond.

The first dragonflies I saw were Black-tailed Skimmers, and I quickly followed these up with flight only views of Emperor, Broad-bodied Chaser, and Brown Hawker. I eventually managed to photograph the Black-tailed Skimmers and a pair of Blue-tailed Damselflies before the battery packed up.

Black-tailed Skimmer

Blue-tailed Damselflies

A couple of professional looking photographers were also snapping away. I bet they brought spare batteries.

Thursday June 21

The start of the longest day dawned with sunny intervals and a chilly north-westerly. Technically I missed the dawn because I was down to empty the moth trap at 05.30, have removed two Heart and Darts from the bathroom.

As usual the area surrounding the back door provided plenty of interest before I even got to the trap. A rather large grey moth reminded me of Early Grey but its forewing was 22mm long, pointing to something new. I eventually concluded it was a Sycamore.

Sycamore

Also nestling against the brickwork were two dark moths which also looked to be something new. They were easier to identify than the Sycamore and turned out to be Coronets.

Coronet

Coronet

The fun really began when I checked on their status locally and both my Warwickshire book and my Worcestershire book suggested they were very scarce indeed. In rising panic I texted JS asking if they were rare. It turned out that they put on a population surge around 2005 and they are now not so unusual.

When I had opened the back door a small moth, probably a carpet moth sp, fluttered away across the garden. A little later another, or the same, flew past and landed. I potted what turned out to be a very attractive moth called a Blue-bordered Carpet.

Blue-bordered Carpet

I finally turned my attention to the moth trap, and could immediately see a Magpie moth type on the perspex. A quick bit of research showed me it was actually a Clouded Border. Quite a common moth but probably another garden tick.

Clouded Border

Also obvious in the trap was a beautiful Buff-tip, quite possibly my favourite moth.

Buff-tip

The outside of the box played host to a Common Plume, while an all white moth on the inside of the perspex proved to be a White Satin Moth.

Common Plume

White Satin Moth

Rather trickier was a pug on the underside of the perspex overhanging the edge of the box. I was afraid that by removing the perspex I would disturb the moth so I ended up lying on my back to try to photograph the moth from ground level.

Double-striped Pug

The result wasn't very satisfactory, but I think it shows a Double-striped Pug. My contortionist act was vindicated as the moth did indeed fly off as I tried to move the perspex from the box.

The next half an hour was spent carefully removing egg-boxes from the trap. Each one contained several noctuid moths for identification. Most were Heart and Darts, but I also recorded at least four The Uncertains plus one less well patterned one which I decided was a Rustic, a Bright-line Brown-eye, a Heart and Club, a Large Yellow Underwing, a Flame Shoulder, and a Small Fan-foot.

The Uncertain

Heart and Club and Heart and Dart

Bright-line Brown-eye

Rustic

For once I was not having to squint at loads of confusing micros. Just a handful were present, and they were all species I have seen in the garden previously this year.

The outside of the box harboured another year-tick in the form of a Garden Carpet.

Garden Carpet

I started putting the equipment away thinking I had seen everything, but I had missed a micro which was another tick. I say missed it, I had actually placed the perspex on top of it without realising my error. Fortunately it was so small that it survived the experience and I was able to pick it up. It was a Bird-cherry Ermine.

Bird-cherry Ermine

I was probably fortunate it wasn't less spotty as it may have been impossible to identify. There are several very similar species which can only be identified under a microscope.

Finally, while I was processing the moths, a Great Spotted Woodpecker flew into the apple-tree. Token bird !