Mothing

A friend set a couple of moth traps in the Magic Garden last night but the forecast cloudy weather never materialised and it was a clear, cool night – not ideal for moths. With a catch of 38 species it was markedly different from the 700 moths of 100 species caught on a warm, muggy July night here last year but it did include a handful of new species for the parish including this Elephant Hawk Moth.

 

With only a couple of moth trapping sessions in the parish to date even quite common species are still being added like this beautiful little Buff-Tip, doing a very effective imitation of a piece of broken Silver Birch twig.

 

And this Peppered Moth

 

And it’s always a pleasure to catch these fabulous Poplar Hawk Moths although they have feet like Velcro and are very hard to dislodge!