End-of-year roundup

I'm now fairly confident that unless a Winter Moth appears on my kitchen window in the next couple of days our total for the year will stay at 399. Obviously that's frustratingly close to 400, but we can't really complain: it's been a brilliant year (at least from about mid-June onwards: I hope to get to grips with a few more spring species in 2014), with a couple of really good species for the area in the form of Telechrysis tripuncta and Dog's Tooth, and numbers which, I suspect, we'll have to wait a long time to see again.

Looking over our records, I see we have a total of 10,775 individuals for the year (OK, many of them will have been retrapped, but it still feels like quite a level of abundance); with the highest number of species on any one night 82, on 13th July, and the highest number of individuals in the trap on one night 317, on 23rd August. Although I haven't many previous records to go off, it looks to have been a good year for Agriphila geniculea, Blood-vein, Bright-line Brown-eye, Burnished Brass, Common Marbled Carpet, Flame Shoulder, Mother-of-pearl, Old Lady, Poplar Hawkmoth (52 individuals caught this year, with one of the catches shown below), Setaceous Hebrew Character, Silver Y, Spectacle, Square-spot Rustic and Straw Dot.

Anyway, we're pretty thoroughly addicted, and hoping for some mellow spring weather soon so as to get going again: many thanks to all for such an interesting blog to follow, and especially to Tristan for his hard work setting it up and running it.