One Early Thorn, one Pale Brindled Beauty, one Hebrew Character and 2 Emmelina monodactyla in the trap last night.

Whitefield, Wiveliscombe

Two Dotted Borders in the trap along with, to my astonishment, a Red Admiral butterfly!  Over the years I have trapped the occasional Red Admiral in the autumn but never in February.

Whitefield, Wiveliscombe

Another warmer night saw the arrival in my garden trap of the first Early Thorn I have ever taken in February.  I also had an Early Grey, a Pale Brindled Beauty and a Chestnut. Only four specimens but the variety is encouraging.

Whitefield, Wiveliscombe

After an absolutely blank week I was delighted to take an Oak Beauty last night - my first for 2008.

Just received this picture, from Gail Jeffcoate, of a Pale Tussock in February!  Has to be a record.

Gail said: "It was on a door at my cousin's house in Taunton (where I was staying to attend BC Regional Conservation meeting). I know this is a common moth but thought you might like a record of it in February! I suppose it might have pupated in their house/garage somewhere, hence the early emergence."

The 'normal' flight period is shown below:

Tried my Robinson last night in the garden here west of Yeovil - but drew a blank!  Just a couple of Diptera braved it.

Rather optimistically I might add: despite a fine day, the temperature dropped under a clear sky and everything was frosted up this morning.

Despite a warm calm night last night there were only 3 moths in the trap - one Emmelina monodactyla and 2 Hebrew Character. Frog spawn in the ponnd last Monday though!

Also 2 worker Bombus lucorum and one queen Bombus terrestris working plum blossom.

This is a fairly new scheme, organised by Dave Grundy, and not to be confused with the Butterfly Conservation 'Garden Moths Count' scheme.

I think this is a very good idea.  Basically, if you regularly trap in your garden then the scheme requires results for a set of common moths on each Friday night (to Sat am overnight) throughout the season.  To be consistent it is ideal if the night for which records are taken is always the Friday but some latitude is allowed here.  Also, if you need to miss the odd week then this too can be accommodated.  All you do is make a summary of the nights catch in a spreadsheet and return this at the end of the year.  The moth species are defined and you just add in your numbers.

The idea is that trends across the UK can be seen more clearly with a network of garden trappers all recording in a very similar and regular way.  Your contribution to this experimental project would be most welcome and it is an exciting and interesting idea.

At the moment there are no providers of this data in Somerset and if anyone thinks they can do this then please let me know - or, you can contact Dave Grundy direct on .  The pre-requisite obviously being that you are likely to put your trap out each Friday night and record the catch.

It isn't easy for me as records' hub to extract this data and send it in on your behalf but it is possible.  If you would like me to do this I will - just let me know.  It is fairly easy to do this yourself though.

There will be a web site for this project very soon and a guidance document is available (which I can pass on).  I'll keep you all posted of further developments.