Minors, Daggers, Rustics

Every few years I make a point of saving one or two likely individuals to confirm the Minors, Daggers and Common Rustics, rather than continually aggregating them. I have managed to do these myself in the past, but I have to say it's been a while. With the rainy week forecast I thought I might have a go, but it appears my chemicals may not be up to it - my bottle of Potassium Hydroxide 10% is looking very cloudy indeed. I'm not surprised, I've had it for years and barely have any use for it as aside from these few aggs. I don't really need to gen det any macros and regardless I'm not up to micros. But it is time to re-stock on chemicals and then I can boil up these four ....

Clockwise: Marbled Minor / Tawny Marbled Minor / Lesser Common Rustic / Grey Dagger

Probably.

Here's a brief update on my square listing. You may recall that up to the end of April things appeared to be going well and I was ahead of my 2013 score. Well, May was pants and through June I've not had as much time to get out. But it's not all bad. As at 31/05/2021 the total was 486sp, and at the end of June the total was 710sp. Here's the respective breakdowns:

It should be pretty clear from these that a big part of the jump between end of May and end of June is that the moth trap kicked into life.

Here's the totals vs 2013:

But the overall totals don't tell the whole story. For example: by the end of June in 2013 I had recorded 122 vascular plants (vs 140 in 2021), 81 beetles (vs 91 in 2021) and 36 hemipterans (vs 38 in 2021). But perhaps most surprisingly, given that 2013 was a great year overall for moths in the garden/square and this year has seemed rubbish, by the end of June I had recorded 196 species vs 207 in 2021.

I never set out to beat the 2013 total, and probably still will not as I'm not making any effort on some groups, just picking bits up casually. But on the stated aim of improving the totals in some orders I think I'll get there - I just need some decent weather and time this month.

As for the 5MR birding, there hasn't been any. I'll probably pick that back up again in a few weeks when things start moving again.

Here's four static blokes in front of a graphics display making their machines create a superb racket ....