Wednesday 8 May 2013

Whetstone, Leics. - Lagging

Managed to pick up a few over the last couple of nights, but the trap emptying this morning was accompanied by rain. I hate emptying traps in the rain! Totals still low though and feels like I'm lagging a bit now. No traps tonight - late home from work and back in early in the morning, and in any case the weather change won't help so I'll wait for the next upturn.

I'm up to 47, including the first aggregate - Parornix sp. which can't be confidently named from an adult in a trap with different foodplants available close by (though fully expect it was P. anglicella as usual, as plenty noted in my 1ksq flying around hawthorn where there was no other potential foodplants). I've also got a few Coleophora cases on my silver birch in the garden, but at too early a stage to name so I will try to rear through.

Looking back at my records over 100 moth species in May alone is typical for my garden, though 2012 was poor with just 68 and 2013 so far has produced just 25. Still time for a surge though .....


Elachista apicipunctella


2 comments:

  1. Skev, might just be the lighting, but I'm not sure the white extends far back enough on the head to make it apicipunctella. Have you looked at E. atricomella?

    Cheers

    Bill

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    1. Hi Bill - I can see what you are getting at, it's not a great shot (a lazy point-and-shoot in the morning in the trap). I get a few apicipunctella around the County and in the garden, and have also had atricomella in the garden. The latter should have a grey head and is a little bigger, so I'm pretty comfortable that this is apicipunctella.

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