Our first event of our 2016 mothing
programme took place at Coed Y Dinas Nature on Saturday 19 March. This was
quite an early event, so I don’t think any of us who turned up were expecting
too much from the evening. The weather conditions were calm, but fairly cool,
so we were rather expecting a fairly small species list and this indeed proved
to be the case.
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| An arial view of the site |
7 of us turned up for the event, which is
quite good for this early event and between us we brought 12 various types of
traps, so the site was definitely ‘well lit up’ for the evening, Chris also
tried some sugaring, but on this occasion this proved to be ineffective.
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| The white sheet devoid of any moths! |
The lights were switched on at about 6:45
and the first species to come to the table was an Agonopterix heracliana,
this was followed be a Clouded Drab and
a Common Quaker, the latter probably
being the most common species of the night. Other spring species that
turned up throughout the evening were;
Small Quaker, Hebrew Character, and Red
Chestnut. The only geometrid species to brave the cool elements was a lone Shoulder Stripe. Only one other Micro
species to make a show was a solitary Diurnea
fagella. In all, only eight species were recorded and in general are all
fairly common throughout the county, although as this particular nature reserve
is rather under-recorded, all the species proved to be new for the site, so
we’ll get a few more dots on the maps for our efforts.
To see the full species list, please click here.
By 10:30pm things had gone from ‘quiet’ to
‘very quiet’, so we all decided to call it a night and the ‘plugs were pulled’.
Peter.
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