:: Wild Places Blog ::

One of the things we were excited about was being able to moth trap in a totally different area than the rather built up Hertfordshire town that we currently call home. Our holiday cottage was an old cottage with walls three feet thick and consequently had a deep porch. As the weather was fairly breezy and unpredictable we decided to set up the trap in the porch. I was excited the after the first nights trapping to find the trap full of moths that, apart from the Hebrew Character, i couldn’t identify. It soon became apparent that they were mostly of the same species - Red Chestnut.

A few nights of wind and rain deterred us but on the 28th we were able to get the trap out again. Only three moths this time a couple of Red Chestnuts and a Clouded Drab.

The final night trapping was the 29th April and although moth numbers weren’t great the variety was. We did have good numbers of flies though - there must have been a hatch of tiny flies because the porch and the trap were just black with gazillions of them. Lots of them seemed to have laid strings of tiny yellow eggs all over our egg boxes.

Red Chestnut (Cerastis rubricosa) - our most commonly caught species.

Glaucous Shears (Papestra biren)

Striped Twin-spot Carpet (Nubula salicata)

Puss Moth (Cerura vinula) - a pair of these found tucked away in a corner under the trap

the only micro we caught, Parsnip Moth (Depressaria pastinacella)

I was quite happy that i only had to ask the county moth recorder, Steve Duffield, for help with id for the micro and the carpet, which i had managed to narrow down to being some kind of carpet.

We didn’t do any mothing during our week on Lewis, the nightime weather was pretty grim - wind and rain. It also didn’t seem fair as our host has an aversion to moths. I remember visiting her one time and she took me to an upstairs room and pointed to a small upturned bowl on the floor. “Can you deal with it?” she asked me. Underneath was a moth which i duly repatriated to the outdoors.