The annoying thing is it could be much higher. I'm seeing loads of day-flying moths in the local area that still refuse to visit the garden. Like this Marbled White Spot that I saw on my walk today. They're only a couple of hundred metres away but I haven't worked out how to attract them yet.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Bida both. The thing with moths is that loads of them need very specific plants as larval food plants so the more plant diversity you have the more moths you get. This area is infamous for basically being in recovery from all the mining and industrial activity so the soil is terrible for farming but great for wildflowers. No need for pesticides and acres of neglected ground that no one wants to build or farm on.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I hope you get to hold on to your sites. The designer John Little argues that terrible soils are the best for biodiversity - ideally no top soil - so that thuggish, nitrogen-loving plants can't take over. Old sand, gravel, crushed rock etc can similar in some ways to chalky downland and you find plants that need the best drainage rock up on those poor soils. Over the years, the diversity can stay high and the ground open - not trying to revert to woodland via grass, nettles, docks, birch etc.
One of my favourite bug hunting sites is due to be bulldozed next year. To be fair though it was only created by destroying the previous habitat but seeing it having to start again will be quite sad. I'm thinking about relocating some orchids but they're not rare locally so they'll spread back eventually.
Moth trapping was a bit poor last night, only about 15 moths of 11 species. Maybe three of them are new species for the garden list though which is the main thing.
This lovely Buff Ermine:
What I hope is a Small Dotted Buff:
and maybe a Brown Rustic but many moths are brown and rusticy so I'll have to wait to get that confirmed by an iNaturalist expert too.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Perfect trapping weather tonight. I've already counted over 30 species of moth and countless interesting creatures that will probably turn out to be impossible to identify. Fingers crossed for at least 7 new species of moth to get me over 200
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
In the end I logged over 40 species of moth despite missing a few, giving up trying to photograph some of the livelier micromoths and watching a large spider drag an interesting moth into a crevice before I could get a photo. I reckon if I'd stayed up for an hour more I could have logged over 50. It's going to take a while to work through all these anyway but there were some nice new ones in there. This Pale Prominent was a favourite, despite the Donald Trump wig.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
We had over 45 types of moths last night. I don't know how many we lost or the cat had, he was batting them as they escaped the trap at first light. Best was two elephant hawkmoths and a privet hawkmoth, also brimstone , yellow underwing, and cinnabar, and a green one haven't identified yet.
Posts
Green Silver-lines
White Plume
Smoky Wainscot
Cinnabar and Small Magpie
Clouded Border and White Ermine
Ghost Moth
Green Pug
Cinnabar and Beautiful Hook-tip
In the sticks near Peterborough