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

Saturday 17 October 2020

Latest from the garden moth trap

I continue to run my moth trap around 3 times a week here in Stevenage, North Herts.

I have mostly been using my Actinic, with pretty poor results, although night time temperatures last week did dip as low as 4c.

Last night however I ran the MV Robinson trap instead and was rewarded with 13 moths of 9 species, not a lot compared to some folk recently, but about as good as it gets here.

Highlights were two new species for the year, and 3 fresh season first Red-green Carpet, which were all differently marked.
Both new for years species were extremely washed out, not the same could be said for one of the Red-green Carpets though!

I also trapped two late micro moths, Celypha lacunana and Carcina quercana, the latter my latest record ever.

When I was potting up one of the Green-brindled Crescent's, it jumped into a defensive posture and stayed like it for quite some time, before flying off, four years ago, I experienced this defensive mechanism with a Satellite, and wrote an article in the Entomological Record & Journal of Variation.

I can only assume that it was playing dead and trying to avoid being the next snack!

Garden species count for 2020 now upto 487.

Catch Reports - Back Garden - Stevenage - North Herts

16/10/20 - 125w MV Robinson Trap

Macro Moths

November Moth 2 [NFY]
Red-line Quaker 1 [NFY]
Chestnut 1
Common Marbled Carpet 1
Green-brindled Crescent 2
Red-green Carpet 3

Micro Moths

Carcina quercana 1
Celypha lacunana 1
Epiphyas postvittana 1

Chestnut

Green-brindled Cescent

Green-brindled Cescent

November Moth

Red-line Quaker

Red-green Carpet

Red-green Carpet


Posted by Bennyboymothman at 20:31

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