Recording chores

Top Moth from National Moth Night for me: an iridescent Green-brindled Crescent

Common Marbled Carpet

I have belatedly caught up with the fact that the last three nights have constituted this year's National Moth Night, a fairly recent way of harnessing amateurs' enthusiasm to get a clearer picture of the UK's growing record of species and numbers. This is an entirely excellent idea, especially in providing solid data to counter the mercurial ways of the media (in which I used to work for many years) and the resulting, exaggerated highs and lows in reports of moth gluts or suggestions that species are dying out altogether.

Another favourite: Ruby Tiger with a long-snouted caddisfly

Snout and another caddis

So I joined in on Friday night, having missed the previous evening because of a visit elsewhere. I am not a sedulous recorder and find the painstaking listing of species and numbers in the trap much more difficult than I should. Since childhood, I have preferred to concentrate on the 'treasures' in any list of facts or collection of objects. Indeed, cherry-picking the curiosities of life is probably the main reason why I decided to make my living as a journalist.

And another; the good old Burnished Brass (f.juncta)

Here by contrast are the figures from Friday's trap, which I must also remember to send to the organisers of National Moth Night - and do let me encourage you to do likewise. I will try to be more on the ball next year and flag the event up in advance.

New for the year: Autumnal Moth

Red-green Carpet

35 Setaceous Hebrew Characters 

31 Black Rustics

10 Large Yellow Underwing

8 Lunar Underwing

5 Red-line Quaker

4 Square-dot Rustic

4 Lesser Yellow Underwing

4 Sallow

3 Green-brindled Crescent

2 Autumnal Moths

2 Centre-barred Sallows

2 Beaded Chestnut

2 Straw Dot

One each of Red-green Carpet, Common Marbled Carpet, Burnished Brass form juncta, Rosy Rustic, Ruby Tiger, Snout and Silver Y.

Silver Y, a seasonal immigrant in great numbers

There were also three 'carpety' moths which I have yet to identify - probably faded Common or Dark Marbled Carpets but I wonder if one of them is a Streamer; and two 'grey-y' gents, or ladies, as my granddaughter would no doubt call them, whose ID I also need to track down. Here they are:

These are the two 'grey-y' ones. I think they are two more Lunar Underwings:

The micros consisted of the dainty Gold Triangle, Hypstopygia costalis, pictured left, and the two tortrixy types shown below, one of them very battered. I think the top one is a Dark Fruit Tree Tortrix, Pandemis heparana, and the knocked-about one a Garden Rose Tortrix, Acleris varienaga. I should be sure, as both are common and come here often, but there we go.