Keep an eye open for the Small Brindled Beauty

One of our more uncommon and elusive species is the Small Brindled Beauty. Its flight period is around this time, so please keep an eye open for it, in and around your traps, but you don't have long to record one as they are normally on the wing for a couple of weeks, then they're finished, so keep those traps up and running for the best chances of seeing one.

Peter.

The January challenge results for 2014

Hello Everyone.

Here are the results of the '10 Macro/5 micro challenge for January 2014'.

This year for the first time, micro moths were included in the challenge and I think, generally speaking they've made quite a good show with ten species being recorded.

As you can see, the chart below shows that ten recorders took part in this years challenge (two more than last year). Only one recorder actually reached both targets of ten macros and five micros (myself), but everyone made a good effort, although generally speaking the records were on the low side. This was likely to be due to the very wet weather we had throughout January, rather than anything else.

Overall, an excellent 25 species, (15 macro and 10 micro) and 405 moths were recorded. By far the most numerous species was the Winter Moth, which was probably to be expected, surprisingly though, it was only caught by two recorders. The Early Moth was the most numerous species, caught by the most recorders (4).

 

Below is a chart showing the top five recorded species for the last three years. Once again the Winter Moth holds the top spot (which is not to be unexpected really), but generally speaking the moth count is well down on last year.

Many thanks to all those who took part in this years challenge and often in atrocious weather conditions (did the rain actually ever stop!). As well as being fun to do, the 'challenge' also gives us more data for those often under recorded winter flying species which we wouldn't have were it not for extra trapping done in the 'challenge'.
The full list of recorders who took part are:- Douglas Boyes, Richard Vernon, Peter Williams, Les Wilkins, Maria Wagland, Deborah Griffith, Paul Roughly, Alan Tadman, Tammy Stretton & Sue Southam.

All the best and happy mothing during 2014.

January moth challenge

Hello All,

Now that January has drawn to a close could those of you who took part please send me your results for my ‘January moth challenge’? This year January was very wet and mild, so it will very interesting to see how you all got on. I need just three bits of information from you:-

1) A full list of macro and micro species recorded.

2) Total number of moths recorded for each species.

3) Days trapped during the month.

Please remember, it doesn’t matter how many species you recorded during the month, even if you caught just a single moth, please send me the details as it all goes towards building up the larger picture. Thanks.

In a week or so, once I’ve gathered in all the data in, I will post the results on our blog.

All the best,

Peter.