Round here everyone is reporting masses of large yellow underwings, I am getting a few copper underwings, and I have had a red inside on a previous year, but so far no blue underwings, although they have been reported at shepshed. There seems to be a lot of humming bird hawkmoths about, but not in my garden.
An interesting two-in-one find from the moth trap last night: A sexton beetle (Nicrophorus
investigator) along with a necklace of hitchhiking mites. There's been a smell of death in the garden for a few days so I guess that this beetle has turned up to deal with whatever is decomposing in the bushes. It certainly smelled pretty bad
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Chuck some dead animals around the garden and you never know I also recorded this tiny rove beetle which is apparently a nationally scarce species. It was near the trap rather than in it so I don't know if it came to the light or if it was a coincidence.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Chuck some dead animals around the garden and you never know.
Good to know. I am always struck that so much must die every day, even in this part of fairly central London - bugs, invertebrates, insects, slugs, birds and small mammals - but I rarely seen any - in my garden, in parks, on the roads... (Yes, I know street sweepers and the council take away a lot from the streets). In ten years, I've seen one bird corpse in my garden (a few weeks ago). The snails and slug I cut up are always gone the next morning. I would guess mice, pigeons, crows and foxes will pretty much eat anything. There is major savaging going on, quietly - worms, frogs, spiders, moths, beetles, bees disappear. It's an under-appreciated cycling because most of it is invisible / sem-invisible. All the bodies feed the soil too and the things that eat the bodies digest them and that goes back into the soil. So yeay! for cleaner mites and sexton beetles and all the smaller industrial-strength processors!
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Photographing moths is a good reason to keep glass doors and windows clean [mental note to self. Gets out window spray].
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