Wednesday 30 April 2014

Lanlay Meadows revisited

With a nice warm evening in Cardiff yesterday I decided at the last minute to head down to Lanlay Meadows (Peterson-super-Ely), hoping for better weather than my last visit on 12th April. When I left home it was a sultry 14.5C (with some cloud cover), 15 minutes later as I arrived on site it was down to 10.5C, and by the time I switched on it was 7.5C with no cloud whatsoever! I nearly packed up there and then, but I'm glad I didn't as the temperature didn't fall much further and the moths kept trickling in throughout the 2 hour session.

Around 33 species were recorded in total between my MV and two 6W traps, including a few leaf mines recorded while dusking. The highlight was probably Red Sword-grass which is pretty scarce in Cardiff and the Vale with just a few previous records. Other nice macros included Scorched Carpet, Devon Carpet and a range of Prominents (Coxcomb, Pebble, Lesser Swallow and Pale).

Red Sword-grass
 Among the micros, Carpatolechia proximella and Phyllonorycter harrisella were new for ST07.
Phyllonorycter harrisella
And this Eriocrania sangii mine on birch is only about the 6th county record. Worth looking for the birch-mining Eriocranias at this time of year - sangii is the easiest one to identify as the larva is dark grey (most of the others are whitish).
E. sangii on Birch

2 comments:

  1. Looks like you had a good evening George! 30-odd species is impressive for the time of year! I did light my trap up too, and the highlights werer Streamer, Waved Umber, Pale Prominent and the first nut-tree Tussock I've seen in the garden.

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  2. Thanks Adam - I'll try and give you and others more than 2 hours warning next time I go! I think the combination of massive oak trees, wet and dry pasture and overgrown hedges should produce a great range of species in the summer.

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