Broom-tip and Chocolate-tips

At last, a night to remember!  It was warm and overcast here at Dingestow Court last night (7/5/2016), and moth numbers were well up on the previous night, with 77 of 29 Macro and 8 of 6 Micro.  The forecast drizzle arrived in the early hours, so things were pretty soggy, but moths do seem to fly in good numbers on warm, damp nights.

 

Highlight was a Broom-tip - the 2nd for Dingestow and first here since 1997 - but 6 Chocolate-tips were a nice surprise as I seldom caught that species when I was trapping regularly in the early 2000s.  Other nice moths included 1 Lobster-moth, 1 Acleris literana, 4 Waved Umber, 2 Plutella xylostella, 1 Scalloped Hazel, 1 Sallow Kitten, 1 Lesser Swallow Prominent, 1 Poplar Hawkmoth, 1 Oak Nycteoline and 1 Oak-tree Pug.

 

Broom-tip seems to be having a good year, with several people reporting them on Twitter, often accompanied by comments like "only a handful of previous VCxx records".  Nick Felstead had one in southern VC35 recently, which I'm hoping he'll post a photo of.  I'm not sure whether these records indicate local wandering (our nearest Broom are about 1km away, albeit perfectly in line with last night's SSE breeze), national wandering or an immigration.