On Sunday afternoon, whilst I was out at the KP watching LCFC win, I
speculatively left the MOL pheromone lure in the trap out in the garden. I put
it out at 13:00, literally just before I got in the car and headed off to the
game.
Here's a very sketchy map: the blue dot is home, the green dots are definite
oaks that I know of that are closest to home, and the orange dots are a large
tree that I think is oak (I can't get close to it and I've never bothered
trying to look at it to see, but looks like it 'naked' from the lane) and an
area on Whetstone Golf Course that I think has oaks (again to be checked). The
green dots to the SW of home are those at Victory Park (see last post). There
are almost certainly more oaks within this image than I can recall. Either
way, as you can see there are oaks dotted about reasonably close to home
(within 1km) but it is not exactly abundant.
I had no expectations, but with good sunshine, a bit of warmth and a light
breeze it was as good a time to try an any. I got home at 16:30 and headed
straight to the garden to check the trap. Well, blow me. x2
Pammene giganteana were within it. I am 100% certain that these are
completely unrelated to the use of the trap on Saturday: the one I took to
photograph was still in the fridge, and had there been any inadvertently taken
into the car they would have been buzzing around the trap on the passenger seat
for sure. It's perhaps not an entirely unexpected garden tick, as there are
plenty of similar experiences being posted on the 'Pheromone' Facebook group of
garden records. This was considered a rare moth in VC55 before last spring, but
it is clearly quite common - just inconspicuous and perhaps poorly attracted to
light traps.
post-script: whilst I was writing this I'd left out my new ARG lure (intended for Pammene argyrana) in the garden for the last hour of daylight. I checked just after posting - another x2 Pammene giganteana, so they're clearly not coming from too far away!
x2 from this evening on left, x2 from Sunday afternoon on right
1 comment:
Great stuff, buddy! Reading this and your previous post reminded me of the Heart Moth in Surrey. Back in the day (25 odd years ago) it was known from Ashtead Common (ancient woodland, 100s of veteran oaks) which is to be expected of an oak-lover, but also the far SE of the county where the only mature oaks were dotted around an 'empty' landscape of crop fields. Clearly all it actually required was a landscape of huge oak crowns and wasn't fussed at all whether the understorey was woodland glades or wall to wall wheat. Sounds like it may be a similar story with your PG? I recently learned that Heart Moth has crashed on Ashtead, I've no idea why.
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