GMS Week 2

Last night in Llandaff North:

March Moth 2
Small Quaker 1
Common Quaker 1
Hebrew Character 1
Early Grey 1

By my garden's standards, this is an excellent catch for early March, and more moths than I caught in the whole of March last year.

It is encouraging that the mild, wet winter doesn't seem to have had too much impact on the spring-flying moths.

National Butterfly Recorders’ Meeting 22nd March

A plug on behalf of BC:

This is a reminder about the National Butterfly Recorders’ Meeting to be held in Birmingham on 22nd March. Further details and a full programme can be found here: http://butterfly-conservation.org/244-4890/national-butterfly-recorders-meeting.html

Anyone interested in butterflies is welcome, however we do require advanced booking and there is a (heavily subsidised) fee of £5 per person (pay on the day) to help cover the costs of venue hire, tea/coffee and buffet lunch.

If you would like to attend please book a place in advance via info@butterfly-conservation.org or 01929 400209 providing your name, address, contact details and any specific dietary requirements.

Best wishes,

Ian

Ian Middlebrook

Agonopterix ciliella

Hopefully, you can just make out the very feint lines in the terminal cilia - these are the hairs that stick out from the edge of the wings, in this case the hind wings. It's not terribly clear as the photo was taken with the cheap office camera, down the new office microscopes, with the moth in a tube. Agonopterix ciliella has five bands in the terminal cilia, whilst heracliana only has one. So I can make out two at the edge of the wing in this photo, and could see a third on the live moth 'in the hand', so it couldn't be heracliana.


I couldn't get the heracliana to pose properly, but I couldn't see any lines at all on that one.

Parc Slip

After weeks of 1,2 or, more usually, 0 moths in the trap, last night finally provided a decent haul with a minimum temperature of 8 degrees.

Pale Brindled Beauty 1
Dotted Border 1
March Moth 1
Clouded Drab 5
Hebrew Character 5
Common Quaker 6
Chestnut 3
Shoulder-stripe 1
And these 2 micros...
Is this Acleris hastiana (apologies for qualities of photos...)

And the closest I could get with this one was Agonopterix heracliana?

Diurnea fagella

Just retrieved a single Diurnea fagella from the trap.  It's not only the first moth of 2014 for me, but new for the garden record, and looks like a very early record for the species: the phenology query in Mapmate shows the earliest as 3rd March. 

Oecophorids

Before last night's BC committee I potted up three of the many Agonopterix/Depresssaria that had been attracted to the lights at the reserve building at Kenfig, fully expecting them all to be Agonopterix heracliana. I was delighted this morning to find that I had Depressaria daucella, Agonpterix heracliana and Agonopterix ciliella. It's a shame I couldn't catch some more in the end!

Small tortoiseshell

First butterfly of the year today, a small Tortoiseshell in the garden.