Welcome

Hello and welcome to my moth Blog. I now reside in a small village in East Cambridgeshire called Fordham. My Blog's aim is to promote and encourage others to participate in the wonderful hobby that is Moth-trapping.
Moth records are vital for building a picture of our ecosystem around us, as they really are the bottom of the food chain. They are an excellent early indicator of how healthy a habitat is. I openly encourage people to share their findings via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.
So why do we do it? well for some people it is to get an insight into the world of Moths, for others it is to build a list of species much like 'Twitching' in the Bird world. The reason I do it....you just never know what you might find when you open up that trap! I hope to show what different species inhabit Cambridgeshire and neighbouring counties.
On this Blog you will find up-to-date records and pictures.
I run a trap regularly in my garden and also enjoy doing field trips to various localities over several different counties.
Please also check out the links in the sidebar to the right for other people's Blogs and informative Websites.
Thanks for looking and happy Mothing!

KEY

NFY = New Species For The Year
NFG = New Species For The Garden
NEW! = New Species For My Records

Any Species highlighted in RED signifies a totally new species for my records.

If you have any questions or enquiries then please feel free to email me
Contact Email : bensale@rocketmail.com

My Latest Notables and Rarities

Thursday 20 July 2017

Two new Micro Moths for Hertfordshire

The traps are still busy here in North Hertfordshire but there is a noticeable change in numbers and things are slowly dropping down.
The Macro moth list for the year is slowing down somewhat but the Micro moth list is in a league of it's own!

 I had confirmed today by phone call, that a Syncopacma species that I netted at dusk at Hexton Chalk Pit on the 25th of May is indeed Syncopacma sangiella, a new species for Hertfordshire.

 Also only just last night I potted up an unfamiliar Tortrix moth...

 The story starts a little before this and I was scheduled to do a field trip with Lionel and Matt from Biggelswade to Home Wood (Where we recently recorded over 288 species!)
But a turn of events with my wife being really poorly saw me having to cancel meeting up with the guys and things got worse with my facebook messenger message not getting through to Lionel to say that I wasn't coming because I didn't realise that he didn't have a smart phone...eeek. 

So there's Lionel sitting in Home Wood with no generator waiting for me to turn up, great! 

 Finally Matt messages me saying am I ok and at that point the penny dropped and Matt said that Lionel never would have picked the message up.
Massive technological fail and my wife just got worse and worse.

 Come the morning I went through my trap writing down the usual species and a few new for year one's as well, all Micro Moths!

 Then an unfamiliar Tortrix moth was spotted on one of the lower egg trays and with a small glass tube in hand it was safely potted.
On initial inspection it reminded me of Pandemis corylana but something didn't fit right, and a quick flick through the books had me settling on Adoxophyes orana a rare Tortrix moth that has just one record from 1983 in neighbouring Bedfordshire and 21 records in nearby Essex but after a chat with Colin Plant and a confirmation email, it is indeed a first for Hertfordshire and my 4th first for Herts this year alone, incredible!

It's amazing how a bad and annoying situation can turn into something this good.

Syncopacma sangiella












Adoxophyes orana
Posted by Bennyboymothman at 16:36

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