Hereford and Worcester Moths

 Emperor Moths - Hatterall Ridge

Took a climb up to the Offa's Dyke path running along the top of the ridge which marks the Welsh border today. Having looked at the new westmidlandsmoths website there are records of decent numbers of Emperor's up there, certainly in the 70's and 80's but not much recently. Were they still present..? yes they were, dozens of them in fact! Took a lure and they started appearing around us within 100 yds of the car park. I put the lure back in it's pot within 10 minutes, but for the next 2 hours I was regularly inspected by curious males, probably about 30 or 40 buzzed me by the time we'd reached the plateau at 600m. Once on the plateau scanning with binoculars nearly always revealed 3 or 4 motoring about in search of females. They can't have been out for long as this area had lying snow up till a week ago. Action ceased at 4:30 and we made our way downhill. It was nice to see them in numbers doing their thing, and anyway, they won't come to my garden, beleive me I've tried!

John

Emperor Moth

Emperor Moths searching at the spot where a lure was.