I have just put my trap out for the first time since 7/12/09. All the snow has gone here and it promises to stay a few degrees above freezing. My enthusiasm has been reignited by two recent events. The first was reading a novel by Poppy Adams called "The behaviour of Moths." It is set a few miles from here in North West Dorset and the central character is an odd female moth collector. There are a number of mothing errors that only sad people like ourselves would pick up on but it is a novel that I would highly recommend despite the search for the elusive Norwegian Dogtail moth!
The second event was a night spent entering my 2009 records onto my card index. Looking at the numbers and different species I caught last year confirms the impression I received at the time that it was a decent year. A number of moths are still in the doldrums here but most have easily recovered from the poor previous two years. All the common species that I had taken yearly up until 2007 were found again and the only species that I failed to see last year that I have taken annually since 2003 was Large Nutmeg.
In an attempt to easily compare years in my garden I have devised my own statistical method of ranking the year. It basically compares the total numbers caught of the 20 most numerous Somerset moths according to the 2000 Atlas and multiplies that number by the number of different macro species caught that year. For anybody interested the results are as follows in my garden for the 7 years from 2003.
- 1st 2004 with a score of 122
- 2nd 2006 ....117
- 3rd 2005......109
- 4th 2009......108
- 5th 2003......100
- 6th 2008......83
- 7th 2007......48