Mothing - home and away

RSPB employees are fortunate in that we can take a sabbatical every few years. I've never got round to taking one even though I've been with the charity for almost 15 years. This year I changed that by spending August in Scotland helping with Reserves' invertebrate monitoring programmes. This included two weeks at Insh Marshes monitoring Dark Bordered Beauties. I was also able to do a bit of trapping on the Cairngorms. The result being over 40 new species that I've never seen before including several scarce and/or northern species, such as the aforementioned Dark Bordered Beauty, Cousin German, Chestnut-coloured Carpet and Portland Moth (which was very unexpected).

I got back home at the beginning of September and have trapped regularly over the last couple of nights. On the 3rd I picked up a new micro for Abernight, which I've identified as Dichrorampha acuminatana (but am happy to be corrected) and this morning I had a nice selection of commoner migrants including 4 Vestals, 3 Silver Ys and singles of Dark Sword-grass, Rush Veneer and Rusty Dot Pearl.