December 2017-

Deceivingly productive

Many people but not all, have packed away traps by this time of year and resigned themselves to armchairs for the winter months.
There are a select few that continue to search and I have decided to follow suit and keep looking for moths as a experimental project.
I had tried it last year and came up with a few moths and was of the opinion that the mothing season does not grind to a halt completely.
Some moths do overwinter, some emerge even on the much cooler days, and occasionally some moths are found in homes, sheds and outbuildings. All is not entirely dead quiet in the lepidoptera world yet, as one might think.
With December 2017 I continued to trap when possible between adverse weather, albeit with a few missed opportunities and surprisingly came up with figures of 140 moths of 14 species.
I was taken aback by these figures and equally very pleased with the result given the effort I put in plus backing up initial thoughts from 2016.
12 were macro's, some of which fly at this time of year and a few Autumn hanger-on's.
Two of the 14 species seen were overwintering micro's, one of Scarce A category, so it's definitely worth having an eye open even on the milder days.

 The appropriately named Winter Moth, which can be found quite commonly throughout the winter period.