Tuesday April 8

No moth-trapping as such for the last few days, but plenty of moth stuff to talk about. On Sunday I was obliged (by Mrs H) to do some half-hearted gardening. I quickly got distracted by some leaf mines in the leaves of the brambles I was cutting.

This could be the mine of Stigmella aurella but I don't really know, and I suspect my Facebook friends will be a bit irritated by having to judge the unidentifiable.

So this morning I headed for work and on alighting from the number 50 bus in the city centre I discovered a collection of moths on a grating on the side of Selfridges. They were two Angle Shades, a Common Quaker, a Small Quaker, and a two-tone dark moth about the same size as an Angle Shades. Annoyingly it was out of reach, and all I could do was try to take a photo with my Smart Phone.

I got to work and struggled to find an image of anything like it. My best guess was the migrant Dark Swordgrass. I shared the photo with JS who agreed it could be a Dark Swordgrass. As this is quite a scarce moth I photographed the screen shot this evening and posted it on the Facebook page. No one has commented yet. I think I may be getting a bad name in moth trapping circles.

Speaking of which, my name is now mud at work. I had captured one of the Angle Shades and popped it into the downstairs fridge. Here it was discovered by one of the receptionists, who freaked out.

Angle Shades

Back home, the moth was shivering its wings as I took it out of the pot. It soon flew into the garden to hide.

PS; Robert Cox from the Facebook Group has agreed it is probably a Dark Sword-grass, so I have felt emboldened to send the photo to David Brown. It appears that three migrant Blossom Underwing moths turned up in garden traps in Warwickshire at about the same time, which strengthens the argument as they are very scarce migrants, much rarer than Dark Sword-grass.