Scarce Silver Lines & V Pug

I've caught a V Pug in Lincolnshire but this is the first time I've found it in my garden, the Scarce Silver Lines is a bit tatty but still another garden tick so I'm happy enough.

Dingy Shears

Dingy Shears

Narrow Bordered 5 Spot Burnet abb

Dingy Shears is another first for my garden but it's arrival has been eclipsed by a fantastic aberrant Narrow Bordered Five Spot Burnet which I found on Sunday at Straws Bridge(West Hallam).

Golden Plusia & Spinach

Two firsts for me and the garden and both lovely moths.

The Spinach

Golden Plusia

Small Elephant Hawk

When I originally started trapping moths back in the early 70s in Cheshire I regularly got up to 15 Small Elephant Hawk in an evening, my dad worked in Warrington at a chemical company based near the old Greenall Whitley bottling factory and he would bring home 30 of them each week along with the many hundreds of other moths that he found around the place but until 2 nights ago I hadn't seen one since 1976!.

 

Leopard Moth

I wasn't expecting to ever get a Leopard Moth in my garden but there it was and a stunner to boot.

Leopard Moth

Leopard Moth

Last year I got just 1 Varied Coronet which is another 'scarce migrant' for Derbyshire but this evening I have 3 of them in the trap taking my total for this year to 5 and they've all been pristine so I'm guessing this species has found a foothold in the area.

Varied Coronet

New for 2011

The most notable new species so far this year have been Bird's Wing, Beautiful Hook Tip and Puss moth, the first two are both classed as 'rare vagrants' for Derbyshire. I've also had Cinnabar, Lunar Marbled Brown, Shoulder-striped Wainscot, White-pinion Spotted, Early Moth and March Moth.

Bird's Wing

Beautiful Hook-tip

An introduction

   I've been trapping moths in my garden since July 2009 and considering my suburban location I get a surprising amount of different moth species many of them in large numbers.
   It took me a while to get back into the swing of identifying them after many years away from trapping and my previous blog http://adventuresinentemology.blogspot.com/ was a way for me get other bloggers to help with the ones I couldn't put a name to...... I now use http://www.back-garden-moths.co.uk/ if I catch anything I can't ID so the other blog has become fairly redundant.
   This blog has been created to show photos of any new species I catch as well as a full list of all the macro moth species found in my garden.