FlyinginFordham: Lesser Treble-bar!

Saturday night was a very good night in my garden for moths, despite the nagging wind, the temperature stayed above 17 degrees all night. By dawn it appeared that the wind had abated a bit and there were plenty of moths to record and look at closer in pots.

42 species were logged, slightly up on recent years on this date (generally around the low 30 species mark).

Best moth of the night went to my very first Lesser Treble-bar, a female.

This comes after checking countless specimens spanning nearly two decades! I must be close to have checked nigh on 500 specimens in the last 18 years.

Well chuffed, and on the garden list to boot!

The second good moth was another new species for the garden, the ever variable Acleris cristana.

I get this moth quite regularly at my local nature reserve a mere mile away as the moth flies, and with plentiful thickets of Hawthorn & Blackthorn along our road, I did expect it at some point, but somehow it took a bit longer than expected. Certainly worth the wait!

Two more new additions for 2024 were Dioryctria simplicella (which is annual as a singleton) and Eudonia pallida (Which is a common moth locally, and oddly I missed out last year).

Some flashy macros added some dazzle, with Gold Spot returning and a fabulous Lilac Beauty.