Ketton Quarry - People, Pubs and Moth Porn

Still a lot of work to complete before the Ketton list is ready for comment - a fair few bits in pots to ID and about an hour's worth of digital dictaphone to transcribe! Before all that though, here's a couple of bits from the daytime and other stuff.

Saturday afternoon
Very warm though a bit cloudy with sunny spells. First up, there were loads of these flying about the reserve ..

Six-spot Burnet

I really like the burnets - they are the complete antithesis to the widely held view that moths are boring brown things that fly at night. There were a few pairs in-cop around as well.

Moth Porn 1

Also zipping about was this, offering companionship to the burnets - a good few years since I last saw one.

Burnet Companion

I tried the API lure for Six-belted Clearwing - it worked but not in the deluge of moths that I expected. Only the odd single turned up at different spots - must have been the wrong time of day or not sunny enough - I was expecting a good 30 or so to suddenly appear.

Six-belted Clearwing inspecting lure

Other than moths, the main highlights for me in the afternoon were a big female Adder alongside a big female Grass Snake underneath a tin sheet; a manic alarm calling Green Woodpecker flying out of trees being hotly persued by a Sparrowhawk; a few Marbled Whites - always good to see, and The Beast with Chris Lythall - as ever a good crack with conversation occasionally veering into the surreal ....


Saturday evening
Meeting up at the geology trail carpark, the Melton crew (headed up by Mark Rossell and Oscar Orridge) were preparing to send a runner out to Stamford for chips. I'd already met up with Adrian Russell and we felt a pint was in order instead - Andy Llama Mackay and Dave Tea-boy Orchid Man Gray concurred and we set off to the nearest pub. As it happens, the Northwick Arms was boarded up so we went to Tinwell instead. The Crown Inn was old and quiet, but we ordered a refreshing pint and enquired about food. It went a bit Royston Vasey at that point, with the barman being overly keen to keep us in the pub and offering to make us home make steak and home made chips or home made pie (though he'd let the cook have the night off).

We finished the beer and headed off to South Luffenham to try The Coach House. It looked a bit more hospitable, but we made the mistake of ordering beer before checking on the food situation. Feck - bookings only! By now we were two pints in and feeling more than peckish. We The Boot & Shoe around the corner. More beer and bar meals available - result. Apart from the handful of drunken locals - one of whom was a c50 year old bloke with tattoos on his belly, wearing shoes and socks with denim 'hot pants' and a white shirt fully unbuttoned but tied up at the bottom, and constantly laughing like a window-licker. What a mentalist. The food was okay though, but maybe the Melton boys had a premonition as the chips would have been quicker and a lot less distressing.


Sunday morning
After the marathon mothing session, we headed back to the geology trail car park stopping along Pit Lane on the way. We knew we'd already missed the peak time for Hornet Moth emergence, and the Melton boys had seen numerous individuals, but we were lucky enough that there was a pair in-cop plus a single male and female.

Hornet Moth - superb clearwing

Moth Porn 2

Despite seeing these, I felt the need to try my HOR lure to see how well it works - pretty quickly up to five males were showing interest, although they then ignored the lure and started buzzing frantically around my hand whist I held the lure bag. There is some video courtesy of John Drunkbirder Hague who'd turned up - hopefully it will see the light of day sometime soon.

api-ness, api-ness

Warm sunshine, light breeze, June - perfect conditions for clearwing lures. Only problem being that it was very late in the afternoon (or early in the evening depending on how you feel about 18:30 in late spring!). I nipped up to the plateau of Huncote Embankment where there is a lush carpet of trefoil. Out with the API lure, simply pegged onto some grass stalks low down between trefoil patches, and wait with net to hand.

After c10 minutes I was about ready to move and try another spot, but - hang on - isn't that a ......

Six-belted Clearwing - get in!

Only the one, but given the time of day and perhaps still early in the flight season I was pleased. Even more so as this was a site-first record. I reckon a late morning / early afternoon visit in a week or so would produce a lot more individuals - certainly when I tried other known sites a few years ago this species goes mad for the lures and I've had upto 20 knocking about with first individuals arriving in seconds.

Trefoil Carpet

A Lure In grass

Aside from the clearwing, I also netted a few tortricids around Oxeye Daisies and Common Vetch - including a Pea Moth and at least two, possibly three different Dichrorampha spp. (which will need gen detting).

Scent of Success

Six-belted Clearwing, attracted to API lure in central Leicester 25th June 2003

I last used any clearwing lures in 2005, but it's back to 2003 when I first tried a few different combinations and sites trying to find different species. This year I've acquired a fresh full set which now comprises 10 lures (back then there were only 6).

The lures are simply small rubber bungs impregnated with a synthetic pheromone emulating certain clearwing species. The set I got also included 1 small plastic vial instead of a bung - sure they all work the same.

Preparing them for use is easy..

Clockwise from top left: the lures come in individually sealed bags, what the lure looks like, a bit of string and fine mesh netting, home-made labels. This should be worthy of a Blue Peter Badge.

Once assembled, the lure is ready to be hung from or pegged onto a suitable branch, twig or prop.

When they are not in use, keeping them in a sealed box in the freezer extends their useful life to c2yrs. This year I am hoping to re-find Six-belted, Yellow-legged and Red-tipped, and also to finally see Currant and Red-belted. Orange-tailed has also been recorded once in the county, so I'll be looking for that. Large Red-belted does not respond as enthusiastically as other species, and Lunar Hornet does not respond at all to the lures. On the complete outside chance, bagging the first Raspberry, White-barred or Welsh for VC55 would be nice.

All we need now is some warm sunshine and free time ......

Yellow-legged Clearwing, attracted to VES lure at Bradgate Park 24th June 2003

Red-tipped Clearwing, attracted to FOR lure at Misterton Marsh 19th June 2005