Early Pale Brindled Beauty

Our Winter Moth Scheme garden trap last night produced this rather early Pale Brindled Beauty as well as the usual Winter Moths and a Mottled Umber.  We started this scheme last year trapping every week and our first Pale Brindled Beauty then was on the 13th of February.  Waring states that the usual flight period is January to March but occasionally they can be seen in late November and December.  Ours may be related to the abnormally mild climate for this time of year.  The minimum temperature last night was 6.1°C.

Carolyn & Evan

Winter Moths, Mottled Umbers and One December Moth

Well, our count of December Moth last night did not come up to LLawr Cwrt's numbers! I think the one had got lost!
In addition we only had two other species - 42 Winter Moths and 40 Mottled Umbers, no Scarce Umber or Northern Winter this time.
Of the total number 74 were in and around a 6w actinic bucket - see photos below - and only 9 around a 125w MV, none inside the trap.

December Moths Galore

This picture shows about half the 43 December Moths in the little actinic trap last night. There was a fair bit of milling around, but as far as I could see, there was only one female, She was very noticeably larger.  It was rather like spotting the queen bee in a hive. I don't think I'd seen one before. There were no other species present.   
Stop Press 15th December - Recovering the release box this morning, happy chance, these two were still in it.

 

Feathered Thorn

Don't get excited!  I caught this on Oct 29th here at Plas Treflyn and going through some images it made me check again as its a slightly unusual colour and lacks almost completely the spots between the cross lines.  I caught 4 but only photographed this one so must have looked a bit different at the time.

Moths at Ynys-hir

A dry, mild but windy night did not produce the hoped for number of moths. A 6W actinic and a 125W MV produced 20 moths of 8 species. We had December moth (5), Mottled umber (5), Scarce umber (4), Yellow-line quaker (2), Winter moth, Feathered thorn, November moth agg. and Rusty-dot pearl.

Scarce umber

Tony, Ina & Pete Skinner