Tuesday, 2 July 2013

The Hundred Up in Oxford

At last I've managed to crawl to 100 moths in the Garden Moth Challenge. As I've mentioned previously, my garden does not seem to be particularly blessed on the moth front so I've had to work hard for this total. I've run the trap 55 times this year and caught 476 moths for my troubles, making an average of a measly 8.6 per trapping.  Still it's all been great fun and I'm really enjoying it. With this great effort that I'm putting in I'm just wondering what sort of total my garden can produce in a year, perhaps 150?

Below are the new additions since my last blog posting, the 8 butterflies that I have bumping the total up to 100.

66    23/06/2013    Common Nettle Tap
67    24/06/2013    Mottled Pug
68    24/06/2013    Scoparia Pyralella
69    25/06/2013    Freyer's Pug
70    25/06/2013    Enarmonia formosana
71    27/06/2013    Treble Bar
72    27/06/2013    Lozotaenia forsterana
73    27/06/2013    Lychnis
74    27/06/2013    Phtheochroa Rugosana
75    27/06/2013    Epiblema trimaculana
76    29/06/2013    Eudonia Mercurella
77    29/06/2013    Epiblema rosaecolana
78    29/06/2013    Large Yellow Underwing
79    29/06/2013    Snout
80    29/06/2013    Fan-foot
81    30/06/2013    Clouded Border
82    30/06/2013    Rush Veneer
83    30/06/2013    Heart and Club
84    30/06/2013    Uncertain
85    30/06/2013    Codling Moth
86    01/07/2013    Mottled Beauty
87    01/07/2013    Ribband Wave
88    01/07/2013    Bordered Sallow
89    01/07/2013    Buff Arches
90    01/07/2013    Flame Shoulder
91    01/07/2013    Garden Grass Veneer
92    02/07/2013    Silver-ground Carpet

My seven year old son is still very keen and each morning he rushed down with me to see what's in the trap. He's starting to recognise a few of the species so he knows "Apple Moth" (Light-brown), "Olive Moth" (Udea Olivalis), Common Marbled Carpet and Heart and Dart. His favourite part is still having the noctuids (the "finger moths") on his hand before putting them somewhere safe to sleep for the day. I'm finding that I'm getting more confident with my moth ID'ing as I learn more of the species though I do still struggle with those wretched pugs.

Finally here's some moth porn to enjoy. As always please correct me if I'm wrong with any of the ID's

 The Lychnis
Phtheochroa Rugosana
Epiblema Rosaecolana
Eudonia Mercurella
 The Snout
 Clouded Border

 Bordered Sallow
 Buff Arches - one of my favourite moths
 Mottled Beauty
 Ribband Wave
Silver-ground Carpet, bringing up the 100

2 comments:

  1. You're still getting significant numbers of species we've not had in Wolvercote - like Common Nettle Tap, Rush Veneer and Codling Moth. Also an interesting overlap in terms of some species: we've had: the Phtheochroa and the Epiblema rosaecolana being species we've also first logged in the last couple of days.

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  2. Yes, it's very interesting to compare. I have this theory that I tend to do better on micros but not so well on noctuids though I don't know whether this would stand up to statistical analysis. It's interesting how suddenly one day a new moth is around (e.g. Rush Veneer) which I've now caught every night since they first appeared. All good fun!

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