Thursday 9 May 2013

Greetings from Notts


Hello. I'm Tom (@thebeardybirder on twitter). I've been wanting to do some mothing for ages so I built myself a DIY moth-trap last summer but only managed to run it once, in my girlfriends old garden, and managed to catch myself 3 moths on a nice evening in august. For some reason that was that and I didn't bother again til last week.

I actually run my moth trap in my friends garden (which incidentally is just over the fence from where i ran the moth-trap last year), because my garden is just a communal carpark and doesn't seem very moth-friendly. My friends garden also has an outdoor source of power which makes trapping much easier. Its in West Bridgford in Nottingham and so it is quite an urban location with much light pollution. However the gardens around here are quite large and leafy so i'm hoping to catch at least a few common species, and maybe something exciting too.

So far this year i've run it twice, catching a whopping total of FOUR species :) (plus one that got away). These are:

1 Common Quaker Orthosia cerasi
2 Bee Moth Aphomia sociella
3 Double-striped Pug Gymnoscelis rufifasciata
4 Light Brown Apple Moth  Epiphyas postvittana

Because I don't live there, I can only trap when he's about, and can't really go searching for day moths or butterflies very often, so I certainly won't be winning any prizes, but I'm looking forward to learning more about moths and it looks like this is a good place to start.

cheers

Common Quaker

Bee Moth

Double-striped Pug 
Light Brown apple Moth

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