Friday July 26

As promised I put the trap out last night, and as hoped I awoke to find it full of moths.

In fact the mothing started during the night as a couple of visits to the bathroom produced three new moths, two micros and a macro. Unfortunately, the following morning the smallest micro escaped before I could look at it properly (probably a blessing in disguise because it was smaller than an ant). However the macro proved to be a Gold Spot, potentially quite a scarce moth, while the large micro was a common species I have caught before in the bathroom, Carcina quercana.

Gold Spot

Carcina quercana

One problem I have, being new to regular moth-trapping, is that my knowledge of local status is based on a 12 year old book called Larger Moths of Warwickshire, a magazine with an annual round up of rarer Warwickshire moths (all rarer than anything I have caught), and snippets of information from my mentor JS. He has been fantastic, and recently told me in an email that 2018 has been a sensationally good year for moths. I have picked a good year to start!

Anyway, this morning I peered into the trap and could see a lot of moths and a Hornet. The latter seemed quite docile (it was not the hoverfly mentioned in the previous posting) and I resolved to extract the moths very carefully. Ironically it managed to escape during the morning without me seeing it go.

The commonest macros were eight Dusky Thorns, and five Common Rustic ags. I also found two Iron Prominents, a Willow Beauty, three Shuttle-shaped Darts, a Scalloped Oak, four Dun-bars, and three Common Carpets as well as several rather duller looking species seen previously.

More exciting were the ones I hadn't seen before, the headline act being found clinging to the lead from the plug to the box. At first I couldn't work out which end its head was. This is because it was a quite extraordinary moth designed by nature to look like a broken twig. After leafing through the book I discovered it was a Pale Prominent.

Pale Prominent (facing right)

I was so thrilled with it that I showed it to my next-door neighbour. He tried to look interested whilst outwardly backing away nervously.

The egg boxes produced one more moth which was totally new to me; Tawny-barred Angle (nice moth shame about the name), and a very impressive one which I have seen previously and which I used to find regularly when I lived in a flat in Birmingham; Copper Underwing ag.

Tawny-barred Angle

Copper Underwing ag

The reason for the "ag" is that there is a very similar species called Svensson's Copper Underwing. They are best separated by the extent of the copper colour on the underside of their underwings. To see this I would have to kill it, and it was just too nice a moth. There may be another way to separate them, hopefully.

Turning to micros, I managed to identify two that were new to me, and one that was new for the year (in addition to the Carcina quercana). The new ones were two Eudonia mercurella, and an Ash Bud Moth Prays fraxinella.

Eudonia mercurella

Eudonia mercurella

Ash Bud Moth

New for the year was Chequered Fruit-tree Tortrix.

Chequered Fruit-tree Tortrix

In addition I took a couple of absolutely terrible shots of a 5 millimetre long moth which I couldn't identify. Fortunately JS suggested I look at Teleiodes vulgella, and having done so I consider that that it what it was.

Teleiodes vulgella

Among the rest of the catch I misidentified what JS tells me is a worn Bird-cherry Ermine, among seven others which I hope I have got right. I rather bravely decided a very yellow spotty Pyrausta was just another Pyrausta aurata (JS concurred), and I saw another Euzophera pinguis (one of the larger and more distinctive pyralids).

Pyrausta aurata (Not purpuralis)

I also ignored several worn moths, as counselled by JS.

The final score was 97 moths of 38 species. Not bad at all.