Ketton Quarry, 27/05/2009

The weather forecast on Tuesday was suggesting that Wednesday night would be wet. By Wednesday morning, the forecast was that showers would die out, the wind would drop and it would stay overcast and cloudy all night with minimum temperatures of c13°C. Superb conditions for mothing. I joined up with Adrian Russell and we headed off to Ketton Quarry to get a few hours of light trapping in. As it turned out, the conditions were pretty much ideal until just as we started to pack up when a very light drizzle started - nothing too heavy and no problem. Despite the conditions, the results were a little mixed with a number of common and expected species failing to appear - eg only hawk-moth was Elephant, only prominent was Swallow. However overall the results were damned good with some excellent highlights. We ran 1 x 125W light over a sheet, and 3 x 125W MV traps around the compartments from 21:30 - 01:00. Actually, we ran four traps but a technical glitch with the dictaphone tape meant that the results from one were lost. Additionally one of the traps was nicknamed the 'feeble trap' as for some reason the light output was only half of what it should be - either a choke or gennie problem. The total catch was 411 of 89sp. There is an additional Agrotis sp. (female Heart and Club or Turnip?), plus we recorded c5 small Mullein larvae on, er Mullein! Main highlights: Incurvaria oehlmanniella 2 Bucculatrix albedinella 1 Bucculatrix nigricomella 2 Phtheochroa rugosana 1 Cochylimorpha straminea 2 Cochylis hybridella 1 Euleioptilus carphodactyla 1 Satin Wave (Idaea subsericeata) 1 The Tissue (Triphosa dubitata) 1 Satyr Pug (Eupithecia satyrata) 2 Grass Wave (Perconia strigillaria) 26 Orange Footman (Eilema sororcula) 1 Light Brocade (Lacanobia w-latinum) 3 Treble Lines (Charanyca trigrammica) 14 Marbled White Spot (Protodeltote pygarga) 16 Other highest counts: Common Swift (Hepialus lupulinus) 43 Green Carpet (Colostygia pectinataria) 31 Clouded Silver (Lomographa temerata) 26 Rustic Shoulder-knot (Apamea sordens) 23 Broken-barred Carpet (Electrophaes corylata) 14 Flame Shoulder (Ochropleura plecta) 14 Epiblema trimaculana 11 Satyr Pug - only the fifth modern record for VC55 (2 in 2003, 2 in 2006) Grass Wave - Ketton Quarry is pretty much the only site for this species in VC55 Satin Wave - scarce in VC55 Marbled White Spot - good numbers Euleioptilus carphodactyla - a tiny plume Ptheochroa rugosana - one of my favourite torts Waved Umber Purple Bar