Looking back on 2024

I started this post back at the end of January and then got diverted. That is why it begins like this...

We don't have snow or icicles at the moment but there's a frost most nights and I think that the season qualifies as the very dead of winter, certainly in moth-hosting terms. Time for me to don my slippers, light the proverbial pipe and cosy up in front of the fire, pondering back on the year that's gone and its moths.

Well, we certainly don't have snow or icicles now, as the end of March approaches, but behind the lovely Spring weather as I type, there still lurks the threat of frost. We always cross out fingers tightly for our two magnolias and their many local counterparts, which are all coming beautifully into bloom.  One late frost can make those glorious blossoms look like loo paper.

So, looking back to 2024, in common with other recorders, both in this part of the world and nationally, I experienced a fall in numbers; not drastic but noticeable. However, the species list kept up nicely and I had six newcomers: the Brown-veined Wainscot, Buttoned Snout, Kent Black Arches (second picture above), Oak Nycteoline, White-marked and Jersey Tiger (top picture above) among the macros and Anania perlucidalis the sole novelty among the micros.

I would never have identified the Brown-veined Wainscot, immediately above, without the help of the Upper Thames Moths experts, to whom I paid tribute in my last post, nor the White-marked (just below) which falls fatally for me into the category generally entitles Very Similar Brownish Moths. 

I did manage to crack the curious Oak Nycteoline, though, (first moth below) which romantically made its debut here on the eve of St Valentine's Day. Finally among the macro-moths, the Buttoned Snout (second below) first joined me in the vegetable patch and then appeared in some numbers in our storage attic very late in the year.

The solitary new micro, meanwhile, may well have been here before but mistaken by your famously incompetent observer for a Mother of Pearl. Here it is, Anania perlucidalis whose attractive vernacular name is the Fenland Pearl. 

Not a bad line-up of new species. AND the Clifden Nonpareil came back again, in late August which is one of my earliest records for it.