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Sunday, 27 July 2014

Busy night at Cnwc

I'm glad I have managed to get the traps out at least once during the current excellent weather.  Two MV placed together next to our barn produced ca. 980 moths of 138 species (91 spp of Macro & 47 of Micro) by 12:45 when I packed up and went to bed.  I'm not sure that the double trap helped much, but there were quite a few moths in the top one, loads in the lower one, and loads all over the door, walls etc.


Five species were new for Cnwc: 1 Crescent (photo), 2 Currant Pug, 1 Tinea semifulvella, 1 Agriphila selasella and 1 Mirificarma mulinella.


The Crescent is a wandering wetland moth, originating from who knows where; indeed wetland species were very much a feature of the night, with other wetland/bog wanderers including 3 Round-winged Muslin, 15+ Small Rufous, 1 Beautiful Snout, 3 Slender Pug, 2 True Lover's Knot, 1 Striped Wainscot, 1 Acentria ephemerella (Water Veneer), 2 Anarsia spartiella, 2 Yponomeuta rorella and 1 Agonopterix conterminella. 

Other Macro highlights were 4 Antler Moth, 3 Beautiful Carpet, 2 Broad-bordered Yellow-underwing (photo), 1 Triple-spotted Pug and 1 Bordered Beauty.


Micros of interest (to me at least) included an all-black Prays (to be blogged about later), 1 Achroia griseella Lesser Wax-moth (photo), 1 Pammene aurana, 1 Ptycholomoides aeriferanus, 1 Monochroa cytisella, 1 Emmetia marginea (photo) and the migrant Nomophila noctuella Rush Veneer.

 

Moths were arriving at a rate of several individuals per minute and my smaller plastic trap was visibly shaking!  Goodness knows how many more species would have turned up if I had continued until dawn as there were five common additions in the last 10 minutes.
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4 comments:

  1. Vaughn Matthews28 July 2014 at 00:27

    That's a very impressive haul in that short space of time Sam!

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  2. Barry Stewart28 July 2014 at 05:04

    And not a comfy chair or a mug of tea in sight! I wonder what difference an overnight catch would have made? I can't remember where I read it, but supposedly a single light source is far more effective that any form of multiples (consequently I try to keep my traps out of sight of each other) - if this is true, looks like Cnwc has even more potential!
    The Crescent is an interesting one as it's pretty much restricted to coastal areas in Glamorgan.

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  3. sambbryo28 July 2014 at 12:48

    I had read the same thing as you Barry, so this is the first time I've had two traps together. My usual 2nd trap location shines into our guest room window, and we had a guest so I couldn't run the 2nd one there. I didn't have time to sit down so didn't need a comfy chair!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Barry Stewart29 July 2014 at 03:22

    I remain very open-minded about what makes a good trap setup and experimenting is always educational and sometimes profitable.

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