Moth trapping!

Mothing season is upon us once more! And with some decent weather and dry spells it has been the perfect time to put out the trap in the garden at nights.

We've been trying out different techniques, locations in the garden and even different traps to entice a different array of Moths down to the trap.

Nothing out of the ordinary and no Hawkmoths as we've been trying to find, however a good collection nonetheless. Pictures below are of several Moths caught over the last couple weeks on seperate Mothing ocassions:

Common marbled carpet

Unidentified sp.

Coxcomb prominent

Orange swift

Possibly a Spruce carpet?

Brimstone

Pug sp.

Another Pug sp.

Bright line brown eye moth

Small angle shades

Heart and dart moth

Buff ermine

Flame shoulder

Unidentified sp.

Common carpet (i think?)

Flame carpet

Peppered moth

Undisclosed Peat bog site

In the glorious summer sunshine of early June, we visited an area of old peat bog nestled in between a maze of undesirable arable land in West Lancashire.

The target species was Emperor moth as we've been trying to see, even just one, for years.

It was a great walk through the site but with amazingly no Emperor moths, even though just over a week previously there had been sightings on the reserve of up to 15 individual moths!

As said though a great walk nonetheless with other sightings of c5 Green hairstreak, lots of  Round-leaved Sundews, Wild cranberries galore, Thousands of Cottongrass plants and breeding Meadow pipits.

Unidentified Caterpillar sp. on Heather

Round-leaved Sundew

Wild Cranberry in flower

Cottongrass

Faded Green hairstreak