There were a lot of lacewings out last night. Maybe 30 or more at one point.
This was the only moth left this morning but a very interesting one. This is the Horse Chestnut Leafminer, which was only discovered as a species in the mid 1980s and has only been known in the UK for 20 years. It's only about 4mm long and I almost overlooked it thinking it was something else that I'd already recorded. It pays to double check though.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Provisional count is 65 species photographed from last night and I know I failed to record a couple and missed others too. Oddly there were quite a few species from the night before that didn't turn up which would have boosted the count even higher.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Normally I only trap once a week at most but the weather is too good to miss at the moment. When I do trap two nights in a row though I'm always surprised that there always seems to be distinctly different moths each night. They're usually not freshly pupated or anything so I guess it shows just how much moths move around.
I've just found 6 eggs that I think came from the Oak Eggar. I don't know whether to scatter them or try and raise them. They're quite easy feeders by the looks of it.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Sometimes but I'm better at staying up late than getting up early. My trap doesn't hold micro moths very well so I'd miss most of those if I didn't stay up. Half the larger moths never end up in the trap either. They probably would do if I moved the trap away from the wall of the house though. At the moment the reflection of the light attracts more to the wall than the trap. And this way the moths still get half of the night to do moth stuff.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
This week I was driving through the Devon countryside in the very early hours of the morning and I was stunned by the number of moths caught in the headlights of the car. The worst part of being a moth nerd is being able to identify all the ones splattered on the front of the car afterward though. When I got to my destination it was pitch black and I had to leave the headlights on to see what I was doing. I almost ended up recording the moths that were attracted to the car but it was nudging 2am by that point and I really needed some sleep. This Dingy Footman wanted his five minutes of fame though.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
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And the Oak Eggar certainly is a large beastie.
Excellent Mothing by any standards.