So, moths then…

As stated on the new moth page (no idea as yet how to specifically separate these posts from the conservation stuff and add them on to the moth page, any answers?) I’ve been trying to get to grips with moths.

This year I’ve decided to try and do it properly, namely by getting a newer bigger and allegedly better moth trap, expanding my moth reference material, and trapping on more regualar basis, rather than the ‘ad-hoc when I could be bothered’ basis of the past.

What’s my equipment then? Glad you asked.. I’ve got two moth traps, my older Skinner Trap with a 15 watt actinic tube light, and my brand new Robinson Light with an ‘eco’ 20 watt black-light bulb (essentially the same as the 15w  tube but just folded up like an energy saving light-bulb and slightly more powerful). To translate this into English I’ll explain the two.

The Skinner Trap is a wooden box with two perspex sheets angled down from the sides towards the middle of the box (like this  |\/|) with a bulb in between the two perspex sheets. The idea is the moths are attracted to the light, fly around the bulb for a bit before getting trapped beneath the funnel-like perspex in the box. The box is filled with egg-carton to provide the moths with a place to hide. My Skinner trap has an actinic tube light, which means it runs on hardly any power and omits an ultra-violet light.

A Robinson Trap works on a similar principle to the Skinner, only it is rounded, larger, and has the bulb is positioned slightly differently . The moths this time fall through a much smaller opening in the trap so are much less likely to escape than in the Skinner trap. My Robinson trap has a black-light actinic light but most are operated with an ultra-bright 125 watt Mercury Vapour light, similar in light intensity to a collapsed sun but capable of attracting literally hundreds of moths. My bulb attracts significantly less but is kinder to the environment and to the neighbours!

So in theory my new Robinson Trap should contain more moths in the morning than my old Skinner. Well up to this morning there was no difference! On average the Robinson was attracting maybe 2 moths per trapping session (limited to weekends at the moment due to work), my old Skinner has a similar if not slightly better hit rate.

However, the summer of 2015 in North-west England occurred in April and has been postponed until further notice, hardly ideal moth trapping conditions so it may not be the trap’s fault.

This morning’s count was really good however, 22 individual moths from 12 different species. Comfortably the best trap ever in the garden. The run down as follows (in the order I ID-ed them!:

1 Poplar Hawk-moth, 9 Heart and Darts, 1 Light Brown Apple Moth, 1 May Highflyer, 1 Silver Y, 1 Green Pug, 1 Bee Moth, 2 Flame Moths, 2 Tachystola acroxantha, 1 Blastobasis adustella, 1 Willow Beauty, and one unidentifiable well-worn Pug moth.

May Highflyer

Silver Y moth

Common Micro-moths of Berkshire – a review

I’ve decided in 2015 to try and learn a different taxon group. I may even put birds on the back burner (in a non-professional sense) to concentrate on something else. A bit drastic I know but I don’t really want to be a one trick pony (who lets face it can’t always get the trick right!) and would love to broaden my naturalist horizon. Fungi appealed to me towards the end of last year and is a group I’ll take more interest in for sure. How about molluscs? More specifically slugs and snails, it’s niche and I’ve got two excellent books on them but they don’t really get me going if I’m honest. Now I’ve had a moth trap for coming up to five years which I’ve used most weeks in the summer months. Bingo! Moths it is, I’ve got the gear, I’ve some field guides, the local county recorder lives in my town, and the moths can come to you, not the other way around!

My local county recorder is Steve Hind (more specifically, the micro-moth recorder) and I paid him a visit before Christmas. He is a font of knowledge and provided great help, put me in contact with a local forum, and recommended me a load of books and journals. One of which was the ‘Common Micro-moths of Berkshire.’ This is slightly odd as I live in Cheshire, but I was assured only 6 of the moths in the book don’t occur in Cheshire at the moment. I had a quick flick through it and thought it looked great, so a month and £10 later I bought it.

Now micro-moths haven’t had a dedicated field-guide to them for one very good reason, there are literally thousands of them! And most of them don’t have an English name, instead most have scientific two part names. So they haven’t been all that accessible to the budding moth enthusiast (should they be called mothers perhaps? Maybe not.). This was rectified a couple of years ago with the publication of a dedicated field guide by Stirling and Parsons. But still the sheer number of them can be overwhelming; which is where ‘Common Micro-moths of Berkshire’ comes in.

I have to say the book is excellent, it covers 103 species of moth which are the most commonly recorded in Berkshire. There is an easy access thumbnail selection to quickly narrow down a potential moth at the start of the book and then a full page description of each moth, along with hinting at other moths your selection may be similar to. For example one of my favourite micro-moths is Emmelina monodactyla or ‘Common Plume,’ which I think looks like one of these:

Common Plume

Fiesler Storch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a brief description of the habitat of the Common Plume which is stated as a ‘variety of different habitats’ and whose status is ‘Common’ and then gives a detailed description of what it looks like highlighting important features to look out for, hopefully leading to an easy ID. If not than my potential Common Plume could, according to the similar species given, be a Stenopyilia bipunctidactyla or a S. pterodactyla. There is also a handy graph giving the flight seasons (when are you likely to see an adult flying moth?) although this is less helpful in more northern Cheshire than it would be if I lived in Berkshire. The guide does this pretty well for every moth, most of which are far less distinctive than the Common Plume. Because it is limited to common micro-moths which are you are more likely to catch in a light trap or whilst on a walk it doesn’t overwhelm you with hundreds of options to choose from. I definitely think you can use it in conjunction with the comprehensive Stirling and Parsons guide though, especially as not every description gives clues as to whether the moths are attracted to light or sugar, or are day-flying for instance.

The other thing to remark upon is that the production values of the book are superb. The book looks like it could have come from a major publishing house. It hasn’t. It comes from a local enthusiast group, the Berkshire Moth Group. It is incredibly professional looking, well laid out, glossy pages, a good index, and an appendix which goes into more detail with more alternative species similar to ones found in the main body of the book. There are a few errors which are highlighted in an Errata print-out loosely included at the beginning of the book, including a few mislabelled photographs which would unfortunately confuse IDs. But on the whole these shouldn’t distract from this fantastic book which I would recommend to any naturalist.

So I think I’ve got it. Moths it is for the year (OK maybe I can begin to look at slugs and snails too, and perhaps fungi, and maybe lichen. Perhaps also bryophytes, or perhaps beetles, or hoverflies, spiders even? Possibly.)

Book available from http://www.nhbs.com for £9.99.

Both photos from Wikicommons.