With the weather improving and looking even better for the
week ahead I decided to throw caution to the wind and do a 3 nights in a row
trapping session at Cors Dyfi.
The techy bit – 4 traps in total. One sheet & 125w MV
bulb above the Visitor Centre. One 125w MV Skinner in the carpark. One 125w MV
Robinson halfway down the boardwalk. One 40w Actinic Funnel Trap at the end of
the boardwalk. Start times around 9.30pm, finish times around 4am – I had to
finish this early because the birds have learned quick and come down to peck
all the moths off the sheet and from around the traps! Highest temperature
recorded was 19.7 at start of trapping. Lowest was 11.1 at end of trapping.
The first night, Tuesday 24th July remained warm
and much to my surprise a lot of moths turned up! Just 2 weeks previous I was
still getting averages of just 40 to 60 moths in each trap, now they’d shot up
to the high hundreds – amazing what a few days of warmth and dry can do!
The second night was even warmer with temperatures out on
the reserve staying in the teens, it’s always 2 or 3 degrees cooler out there
than up in the carpark so this made a nice change - though of course it did
mean that the mozzies were totally merciless and I ended up with several
painful and swollen bites. It was worth it though to get over 700 moths
recorded in one night, something not achieved since the warm spell at the end
of March before temperatures plummeted. Most notable of those caught was a
Lime-speck Pug, not seen in the county since 1998, and 2 Clouded Magpies.
One of the most numerous species caught was the Garden Tiger and, whilst most were the standard dark brown with white patches type, quite a few were mostly white with dark brown, something I'd not personally seen before and which led me to wonder if this
species can actually produce a pure white form and what is it that actually
distinguishes pigmentation on the wings?
The final night and temperatures dropped considerably, only
just over 11 degrees out on the marsh – subsequently moth numbers dropped too, though
still very good at around 530 in 4 traps.
Despite the endless mozzie bites, the total exhaustion and
the hours spent filling in the spreadsheet afterwards it was a very enjoyable
time; over 1700 moths were logged of 134 different species and 11 new species
were recorded for the reserve.
Perhaps when I’ve recovered I’ll do it again.....
