My third night in a row. Who needs sleep? Promising to be another warm still night, I decided I was well overdue a visit to this site. The weather station hit 33 late afternoon, but it dropped really quickly just before dark and by the time the lights went on it was 21. The good news was that it stayed warm, dropping only to 18 by the time I had packed up and left after the 3 hour session plus going through time (around 2.30am). The bad news was that the breeze picked up and this seemed to reduce the micro-moths in particular from flying too much. I was joined for part of the night by a neighbour - Evan Bowen-Jones of HWT.
As per usual I have some Minors and Pugs to look at more closely plus around 10 species of micro-moth to id also. To date the species tally stands at 101 species of macro-moth and 29 species of micro-moth, so I anticipate the final list will be about 140 species. To my surprise the commonest moth was Grass Rivulet with 88 individuals counted. Single examples of Triple-spotted Clay, Ruddy Carpet , White Satin and an Obscure Wainscot appeared. Phyl, how many Obscure Wainscot records do we have now for Hereford? Two or three? The only Dagger to turn up proved to be a Dark Dagger upon closer inspection.
Since trapping in Herefordshire (third season now), all of my Burnished Brass have either had no band between the two burnished parts, or at best a narrow band. Chatting to Colin Plant, these are likely to be the real Burnished Brass. For the first time last night I had a good candidate for the Cryptic Brass (
stenochrysis), it having a thicker band and a very rounded edge to the cross linkage. It's worth noting each time you catch one in the event they are offically recognised as two species. See:
http://grampybustard.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/burnished-brass-split.html
Lots of water species like
Catacylsta lemnata and
Elophila nymphaeata, but no Water Veneer at all (
Acentria ephemerella). And with the lack of any dew, a cool breeze, it was a joy to be outside.
Peter Hall
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| Bromyard Downs: White Satin |
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| Bromyard Downs: Scallop Shell |
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| Bromyard Downs: Oak Nycteoline |
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| Bromyard Downs: Grass Rivulet |
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| Bromyard Downs: Obscure Wainscot |
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| Bromyard Downs: Burnished Brass (Cryptic Brass) |
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| Bromyard Downs: Ruddy Carpet |
Grass Rivulet seems to be having a good year, heard of a few people having it in their gardens for the first time or in higher numbers than usual. Perhaps there are more enlightened gardeners about, converting their mown lawns into wildflower meadows with Yellow Rattle.
ReplyDeleteThere was plenty of Yellow Rattle in the area. It continues to spread on Bringsty Common too and both Grass Rivulet and Anania fuscalis are doing very well. I've had more garden records than ever before, but never in all my years of moth trapping has Grass Rivulet topped the abundance list for a night...until Bromyard Downs.
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