After almost two years of very restricted trapping operations I decided yesterday that I could manage an early start (5am) to close down two actinic traps, photograph peripheral moths and remove them out of harm's way. Even so it kept me busy until 5.45 when I returned to bed. The end result was a list of just over 100 individuals of 45 species. The most notable of these were 2 Common Lutestring, 2 Marbled Brown and a Little Emerald. Brindled Beauties and Oak Beauties have been replaced by Peppered Moths and Buff-tips, Muslin Moths by White and Buff Ermines. Also abundant were Treble Lines, Brown Silver-lines and Foxglove Pugs.
The most puzzling visitor was a type of yellow underwing which closely resembled one I caught in 2020 (my blog of 16 September contains an image). Essentially the size and forewing features resembled a Lesser yellow Underwing apart from the 'well-defined black markings on the leading edge of the forewing, near the tip' which were a very distinctive feature of my moth. Sadly the moth disappeared before I could examine it in more detail; I did photograph it but My PC won't allow me to upload photos just now. I will continue trying. The moth in 2020 was eventually recorded as a Large Yellow Underwing, but for me it was too small and the features were not right - as for today's moth the same applies, and it's a bit early for LYUs!
***Chris - presumably this is the photo you referred to. There is a comment on your 2020 posting - by Barry Stewart (using his wife`s email), that it is a large yellow underwing, adding `presumably a smaller one` (or similar words) - Ian.
Ian - thanks for your comment, yes I did revisit the 2020 blog and saw the comment by Barry alias Sandra Stewart! I did record the moth as LYU but I had my doubts, and they came back to me yesterday. The matter will remain unresolved unless or until I catch another one! I did manage to post the above image of yesterday's moth using the copy/paste routine as you suggested, but the system refuses to let me respond to a comment in the usual way.
Welcome back Chris. You did far better than my results last night Chris! I had 12 spp, with 26 individuals.
ReplyDeleteRe posting photos: I`ve had some difficulty for the last 12 months - what I do now is to go into `my photos`, click on the one required and `copy`. Then just paste into/after your text where required.