I found a hibernating Humming-bird Hawk-moth on the window ledge of a block of flats I was visiting in Yarmouth today. I removed it from its resting place as it would have had difficulty in finding a way out when ready to fly. It is alive and well and in the cool. Should I release on the next warm day or wait till next month?
Brian
For a few years now I’ve been searching for the flightless females of some of the species of moths around at this time of year, most of which I did obtain without too much difficulty. The one species that I just could not get was the March moth. This moth is very common here at IGC, but despite searching lots of tree trunks at night and breeding caterpillars through I just didn’t get one! Until this year, when a check of my pot of March pupae yesterday revealed a female! This has now completed my quest for all the macro species found in Suffolk, just need the 2 found further north in the UK – the Rannoch brindled beauty and the Belted beauty to complete the set, hope to find them later on this Spring.
Neil
March moth female bred from larva collected IGC 2011
After 3 weeks of cold nights, it was good to get 2 mild ones in a row. On Thursday I had 5 species including my first Common Quaker of the year. Yesterday (Friday) I took the traps to nearby mainly oak woodland and in 2 hours, 5.30 to 7.30 had over 100 moths of 7 species, including 63 Torticodes alternella. Not bad for February!
Brian
Unfortunately my garden can’t compete with the number and diversity of the Ipswich Golf Club but non-the-less two decent nights catches for me. Pretty standard species though, March, Early, Spring Usher, Pale Brindled Beauty, Chestnut, Dark Chestnut, Agonopterix heracliana (8 on the 17th) and my third Hebrew Character of the season (a lot more to come I suspect!). Need to keep checking the Agonopterix though as I turned up an A. ciliella last year.
Last 2 nights have been excellent for trapping. Thursday night ran a trap around the workshed area (lots of Oak trees there), found it covered in moths in the morning, just like a summer’s night! Over 150 moths caught of 8sp, including 51 PB beauty, 32 Spring usher, 7 Small brindled beauty and a Satellite. Trap in the garden last night didn’t have as many moths but more species, 11 in total including A. acanthadactyla, Small brindled beauty, Dotted border and Y.ustella. Turning cold again for a while but may be getting mild midweek when traps will go out again! Maybe time to dust off your traps if you haven’t tried them already this year yet!
Neil
Tony Davis of Butterfly Conservation has been beavering away for many hours producing an update on the status of the micro-lepidoptera found in Britain. It’s been over fifteen years since the last review was done on some selected families and as this latest report also covers all microlepidoptera I’m sure it will prove to be very useful.
You can read the report here – The Status of Micro Lepidoptera in Britain. It’s a pdf so will need Adobe reader to be installed.
Alternatively, you can pick it up from the BC web site at Reports to download
Tony
Temperature this evening is above freezing here for the first time for ages, and instantly a moth has appeared! March moth sitting on the outside of the kitchen window, first record for the year – I hope many more will follow soon and the cold won’t come back.
Neil
My first moth of the year, a male Early moth tonight at 22.45 at a lit conservatory window.
Keith
Dotted border on the kitchen window this evening, my earliest site record.
Neil
I met up with Sharon Hearle at Barnhamcross Common last night to have a search for Lunar Yellow Underwing (Noctua orbona) larvae. It was quite a warm night and we managed to avoid the rain that turned up a bit later so conditions were good. We’ve done quite a bit of searching for this larvae in the Sandlings but not the Suffolk Brecks so I was interested to compare and contrast with previous experiences.
We began searching in the south-western part of the site, where the soil is more chalky and where I would consider the grass sward a bit too dense for optimal Lunar Yellow Underwing habitat. As we have recorded the moth as an adult on the site before it was not too surprisingly that we found a few orbona larvae, but it took a while. Other larvae found were Large Yellow Underwing, Square-spot Rustic and Angle Shades.
On the eastern side of the road the soil is more acidic and where we searched the sward seemed similar to the rabbit-grazed ‘lawns’ that we found supported good numbers of the larvae in the Sandlings. Here we found better numbers of orbona larvae finding over twenty in just ten minutes.
The final find of the night was a full grown Fox Moth larva wandering across the turf, a little bit unexpected.
Tony
