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).
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| Red Sword-grass |
Among the micros, Carpatolechia proximella and Phyllonorycter harrisella were new for ST07.
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| 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).
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| E. sangii on Birch |
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.
ReplyDeleteThanks 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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