Small Ranunculus - get in!
This species first turned up in Leicester in 2006 and has fairly rapidly spread around the city turning up in various moth recorder's gardens on the way. I've been expecting it ever since but frustratingly no sign either in the garden or when out and about - until last night. Shame it has a knackered wing, but like the Pine Hawk last week I'll take it!
Bordered Pug
Common / Lesser Common Rustic - these very dark brown individuals with pale reniform stigma are the best candidates for confirming as Lesser Common.
Also in the trap last night was this click beetle, subsequently identified as Stenagostus rhombeus thanks to 'Boris' on Flickr.
Not sure yet of this species VC55 status.
7 comments:
Does this mean that I when I get specimens that look like your photo of Common / Lesser common rustic I can count them now as Lesser Common???
Er .. no! Just a better chance of picking one out for gen det.
Well done on the Small Ranunculus Mark. VC30(Beds) has had a 25 records from 5 different garden traps so far. I've not had a single sniff so far, even though they are trapped less than a mile away from me.......
All the best,
Matt
I've kind of suspected that the dark ones (c40% of mine) are Lesser Common - maybe I should send a few to the county recorder for dissection - not sure if he'll love me for that ...
Alastair
The ID on your Flickr page was correct with rhombeus but would be very interested in it's status. Mainly a South/South Eastern species with (apparently) only a handful of Midlands records.
Scratch that. It appears that it is fairly regularly recorded in the Mids these days. Associated with Beech apparently
Sorry all - neglected the blog for a few days this week.
Matt - yes, exactly how I felt. Why me? What's wrong with my garden? It's a superb species though - the orange highlights are really smart.
Hello Alastair - yes, well worth getting a few done though you probably won't need to send many to get both species confirmed. The darker ones tend to be Lesser but of course it's not a hard fast rule.
Russ - precious little beech around here. I've queried the VC55 status with Derek lott - will update if anything interesting comes back.
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