I've managed to get all of my summer and autumn dictaphone lists transcribed and entered into Mapmate. It wasn't too arduous, which probably tells the story in itself.
Whilst 2020 has had some excellent periods of hot sunny weather by day, giving good opportunities for invert recording when out and about, there have been relatively few periods of excellent overnight conditions suitable for big moth trap totals. Excessively windy and/or wet weather have scuppered some of the peak periods, and days when the temps are soaring followed by clear nights with a significant temperature drop are not great either. Then with one thing or another, I stopped trapping before some of the autumnal species were out and about. So I already knew that the 2020 species total was going to be on the low side.
I've never bothered to run a trap every night regardless, as some do. Whilst this would indeed be a consistent approach my (usual) work life means that getting up early every morning is too much. I will try and run it consecutively for several nights when conditions (or my enthusiasm and working pattern) make it worthwhile, but more usually I will run for a few nights, miss a couple and start again. There is still enough trapping to make some sort of year to year comparison valid, until - like this year - there are big gaps between trap dates or a late start / early end to the trapping effort.
Before the first national lockdown, we'd had some pretty wet and crappy weather. The garden was waterlogged for most of the time until mid-March, and so aside from a couple of nights trapping didn't really start until the back end of the month. For most of the year I've just run a single trap, alternating between a synergetic/actinic combo and a 125W MV. I knocked up a quick summary of traps dates and type because I have nothing else pressing to do ....
Green blocks are the synergetic/actinic trap (59 nights), blue blocks are the MV trap (16 nights) and black blocks are the seven nights when I ran both together. So trapping results from 82 nights in total, with 89 'trap-nights'. By far the biggest impact on overall numbers recorded are the big gaps between 27th June - 9th July, 18th - 28th July and 15th August - 31st August with little or no trapping. These are primarily due to weather (or weather-related apathy!). No trapping after 21st September will have knocked fewer species from the total.
Aside from trapping, there are a few records of individuals dayflying, attracted to lit windows or an external light fitting, and a couple of larval records. In total, I've recorded 319 species in 2020 - way down on the 425 species in 2013, but actually only around 30 species down on the average of the last ten years. There is a slim chance of one or two more species for the year, I'll update this post if that happens.
There were seven new species in the year, and I managed to point the camera at all but one - an Ypsolopha horridella on 9th August which flew off from the egg box whilst I fumbled for a pot.
