Randlay Valley Moth Night June 10th, 2011

937 Agapeta hamana

The second meeting of our moth nights run by the Wrekin Forest Volunteers Moth Group (affectionately known as The WuFuV MuGs (a tad difficult to work out I know and somewhat tenuous but once said a few times, it rolls off the tongue quite nicely)).

A cold (min 7 deg C at midnight when we packed up) but dry night, meant for few moths in the traps although a number of species were observed around dusk flying in the meadows. I potted up and ID’d the above micro Agapeta hamana along with over 20+ of one of the more common grass veneer micro’s;
Crambus lathoniellus




As the sun started to set over the tree-line and with a plethora of song birds singing their evening lullabies Mark and Lydia obviously overcome with the ambience of the event  burst into a slow waltz, skittling a surprised Keith to the ground. You can see why Lydia is so attracted to Mark though; he has a light shining out the top of his head! Now where can I get one of those? Aha… I’ll ask new kid-on-the-block Paul Fallon - he has one too!



As dark slowly descended, our 4 traps and Keith’s infamous sheet and torch were completely underwhelmed with  moths! In fact there were very few, although there’s no telling how many would have been around after midnight. My guess is they were all waiting in the trees and grasses for us to leave! And where was Lizzie when we needed her?



I’m still working on the final count and ID’s but with the early evening observations and the traps-count there were over 80 moths including the first signs of yellow peril with a couple or so Large Yellow Underwings and a Peppered Moth made an appearance in my actinic trap too.



We were also joined by a couple of other newcomers Jessica and Marianne who popped in on Graham’s invitation to see what we were doing and why we do it. They’ve been working with the Green Gym on various nature reserve projects including helping to build the new steps on the Randlay site, but this was their first moth night. Hope you weren’t put-off too much by the antics of some members of the crazy gang and hope to see you both at the next one at Apley Woods on Friday, June 24th.




Eleven of us appeared on the night including County Moth Recorder Tony Jacques who no matter how I try to surreptitiously take a photo or two always seems to spot me. Tony, by the way, despite his fame (a reserved celeb), always shies away from the limelight and hates having his photo taken. Whoops! There I go again. How do you rub things out here?

 
 

I’ll publish the final count of moths once I’ve collated everyone’s results: Keith, I have your ONE record, Les, still waiting confirmation of your THREE was it?, Graham I think had FOUR and Tony/Andy - are you submitting your usual 3 pages even though you didn’t have a trap? How do they do that?

Catch you all again soon

Paul Watts
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