Saturday 8 June 2013

Coed y Bedw...again

With an unexpected cloudy evening I decided at the last minute to have another session at Coed y Bedw. Glad I did, with 70 species recorded in 3 hours (between one MV and one 15W Actinic). The best was this Strophedra, which I'm pretty sure is weirana, which would be new for the county.

Strophedra weirana

Plenty of other nice moths too: Alder Kitten, Satin Lutestring (8), Little Thorn (2), Blomer's Rivulet (2), |Clay Triple Lines (2), Coronet (8), Alder Moth (2), Orange Footman (3), Sharp-angled Peacock and Argyresthia laevigatella (2nd county rec?).

Alder Kitten
Clay Triple Lines
Satin Lutestring
Argyresthia laevigatella

12 comments:

  1. Congratulations George, and some great pictures.

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  2. Thanks Chris. That Alder Kitten was the most handsome moth I've seen in some time.

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  3. Alder Moth is such a beauty, isn't it. I haven't had one for a couple of years but I get more of those than Sallow Kitten. I trapped at Werfa, Abernant, for five hours, despite rain at the start and had just short of fifty species. I haven't had the chance to sort out the records yet so I'll blog it tomorrow. Haven't had any sleep for 40 hours so off to bed now.

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  4. 40 hours! Mark, you really are a hardcore moth man. I thought I was doing well to last until 3am.

    I sent John Langmaid the Strophedra photo and he has confirmed that it's weirana.

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  5. Well done George - persistence has paid off! I too am most impressed with Mark's dedication to the cause...!

    Now I am suitably inspired I will go and turn on my trap.

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  6. An idiot, some might say, George. That is a cracking photo of the Strophedra. What camera do you use?
    You've been having some enviable catches down there Adam. Things are finally picking up here, but not so much in the garden.

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  7. Mark - the Strophedra photo was taken using my trusty old Coolpix 4500 (now 10 years old). I still haven't mastered my Panasonic Lumix FZ150 combined with Raynox macro lens, which Chris is using to good effect. Anyway, my wife has taken that one on holiday with her!

    The Strophedra was in mint condition, a cracking little moth. The photo doesn't really do it justice as it doesn't capture the shininess of the moth. I'd no idea what it was until I got home and looked it up.

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  8. Not so much last night Mark - 17 species in the box this morning, although there was a stunningly marked Campion to make up for it!

    Photography is one thing I haven't mastered. I have just bought a new sony point and press which is a lot better than the old one because it focuses on the object in the centre of the screen. The old one did anything but so it was hopeless with the smaller micros. I've also been given a Nikon D80 DSLR which has a manual focus on it, but I need a macro lens for it. Anyone have any tips for what kind of lens would be best to get those really sharp shots of small micros?

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  9. I have a Micro Nikkor 6omm macro lens for my D60, but it isn't very sharp. The best macro seems to be the Sigma 105mm, which seems to have universal praise. My Caplio GX100 packed in last year, so I looked around for a compact to replace it, with the same or similar macro abilities, but found precious little information about that aspect in the many reviews of the several models I looked at. In the end I went for a Lumix LX7 and am very disappointed with it. It will only focus to true macro, while in the shorter end of the zoom range, meaning one has to get ridiculously close to the subject and can't use flash. Also, in those close focus situations, the autofocus is extremely unreliable (10/10 for the quality of the Leica lens, but 2/10 to the Panasonic electronics and design) so I am now looking again for a compact with the ability to close focus while in the telephoto range of the lens, as my GX100 did.

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  10. I got the Sony Cybershot DSC HX20V Mark and I've been reasonably pleased with its macro capabilities (it took the clearwing pic I posted earlier). Might be worth you having a look at it perhaps? It has a 20x zoom, more pixels than anyone could reasonably need (18.2 MP), switches to macro automatically and as I said earlier, the camera always focuses on the mid frame area when in macro mode which makes taking close-ups a comparative pleasure compared to the last one! It also has an image stabilisation function, and believe it or not can use GPS to locate your snaps for you! I haven't played with that yet, but I can see it could be helpful if you are out somewhere without a notebook.

    The downsides are that it is a bit bigger than some compacts, the screen is big but not great in bright light (they are all the same though), no viewfinder and the flash pops up right underneath where you hold the camera with the finger of your left hand.

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  11. And I should have said they are in stock in John Lewis where you can have a play with them first.

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  12. Thanks Adam. The Sony cameras get good reviews, but I have a personal jinx with Sony stuff. Every single piece of Sony equipment I've had (I've had a good few) has gone Kaput not long after the warranty period is up, so I'm now very wary of going there. Everyone I know finds Sony stuff good and reliable, so as I say, it is a personal jinx. Even so, I might take a look at it when I next get to Cardiff, sometime in the Autumn.

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