Poplar Hawk-moth

On our Porthcawl garden gate this morning.

Rhoose

22 species last night and things are picking up nicely here.  Yellow Belle, Waved Umber, Eudonia pallida, Poplar Hawk and Spectacle amongst the catch, but pride of place goes to the first of this years Cream-spot Tigers;

Going, going ...

Just a heads-up to anyone who may have been harbouring a secret desire to buy a Honda EX7 generator, but keep putting it off. Now may be the time to raid the piggy bank and look down the back of the sofa, because it has been discontinued and is now out of stock on many of the sites that were still offering it, just last Friday. This 700 watt model is ideal for running one or two 125 Watt MV traps and is around £300 cheaper that its more powerful sibling, the EU10i.

Llandaff North last night

Last night was one of those rare occasions when GMS Friday falls on the best weather night of the week. The wind dropped at dusk for the first time in days and it remained mild and cloudy, if a little wet. As a consequence I had my best catch of the year with 32 moths of 14 species (which is still not great for early May, admittedly). The only moth of note was this slightly tatty Waved Umber - I do quite well for these and this is my 9th garden record (since 2007). I also caught 4 species of Caddis (see here).

George

Cwm Colhuw id queries

Had a quick trip down to Cwm Colhuw this morning and there was a bit of insect activity in the few relatively sheltered areas. Apart from Micropterix calthella, I saw this little chap - is it Esperia sulphurella?

Then there were a couple of small caterpillars - I'm not sure how identifiable these are in good photographs never mind these wind-affected afforts but any ideas would be appreciated! The closest I could get with this was hebrew character?

And I have no idea of this one...about 20mm long.

more Moth Night 2014

WTSWW have a few events planned for NMN too: George and I will be running an event at Coed y Bedw on the friday night, on top of that I'll be running a 'moth morning' at Parc Slip on the same day and the Trust has a bat/moth event at Swansea Canal in the evening.
The details will be up on WTSWW's event list in due course: http://www.welshwildlife.org/events/

Parc Slip

We had a moth morning scheduled for this morning so put the trap out despite what was forecast and as expected we had a very poor catch of 9 moths of 7 species with only a smart Muslin Moth being new for the year. Still better than this time last year though...