Back from a holiday nightmare!

We are back from Spain after having 2 cancelled flights! the outbound flight was cancelled because the plane was broken and we were delayed 11 hours!
thinking that was bad enough next we found out that the hire car was cancelled too, so we had to kick up a fuss for another car! luckily they had one otherwise we would have been stuck, as the hotel was 50 minutes from the airport!
It gets worse...

On returning to the airport after our lovely week break, we heard the French Air Traffic Control had walked out, so it affected 7 Easyjet flights on tuesday night, the night we were supposed to fly out! massive confusion, arguments, people being arrested! and we had to fork out for another flight home, scheduled....for Friday morning!!
It was either be put up in a hotel and stay with the friday flight, or rough it at Malaga Airport (which is an absolute dump, no restaurants, no shops just 2 expensive cafes) and be put on stand-by for 2 free seats on any UK flight, after 53 hours eating crisps and drinking pop and sleeping on a hard floor we managed to fight for a flight to Bristol (nearly 3 hours away)
So we arrived this morning depraved of sleep and thinking is flying really worth it! luckily we had a great time out there, very warm, friendly people and having the hire car was a bonus (when we finally got one!)

Now your waiting for the moth bit, which of course is what this blog is all about.

Yes I did manage some moths in Spain (woohoo), nothing too exotic but the lights worked! with upto 8 Pine Processionary at a time, Lace Border, Annulet, Vestal, a very pretty purple, green Noctuid, the pretty Pyralid Spoladea recurvalis (Beet Webworm) and a Double-striped Pug made me chuckle (they get everywhere don't they!)
Just sorting them out now as i'm really behind on identifying them.

All in all I tried a few half hour sessionns with a 9w UV camping lantern and 3x 4w UV bank checkers, I limited my time to short sessions because as you know Moth-trapping is banned in Spain, but it's ok to torture and kill a bull! how wrong is that.

All moths were recorded from the Andalucia reguion of Spain East of Malaga north of the town of Nerja.

Here are the ones I know of.

More to come!


Pine Processionary (the most abundant, hardly surprising for the huge amount of Pine Trees)










Vestal (A hugely knackered example but a moth tick!










Beet Webworm Spoladea recurvalis (Very pretty Pyralid, a few about)











Pseudozarba bipartita (Believe it or not, this is a Noctuid, nice colours and quite common)










Rush Veneer (A nice natural shot of the only one seen, a common migrant to the UK)








Lace Border (A Nationally Scarce A species for the UK, got lucky with this one!)









Callopistria latreillei (Easily the best of the trip)