Common Quaker emerged today, from a larva collected last May at Holcombe Wood.

Found a mature Holm Oak in the village covered in mines of Ectoedemia heringella, clearly spreading west rapidly.

My first trap for a while and was rewarded with 14 moths of 8 species: Spring Usher (only my second record), Dotted Border (not seen last year), Oak Beauty, Chestnut, Dark Chestnut, Hebrew Character, Common Quaker (7) and Agonopterix heracliana.

Sad news from Bill Urwin - Jack Astley, who was a founder member of SMG, died recently aged 96. His funeral is on Wednesday at Yeovil crematorium at 1:20 pm.

Yesterday I was in a cave in Cheddar Gorge and discovered 56 Tissue Moths and 7 Herald Moths hibernating. We were looking for Meta menardi and Meta bourneti but only found M.menardi. There were also several interesting Diptera and Hymenoptera too.

The Tissue

Night of 15/2: Early Moth (1) and Double-striped Pug (1).

Night of 17/2: Common Quaker (4) and Hebrew Character (1).

16/2/19 - even more diappointing here, just a solitary Hebrew Character, signing up for the lonely hearts club I suspect.

Sunday 3 p.m.  A slightly dozy queen wasp inside my porch window - it must be getting warmer.  I don't recall finding one this early in the year before.

A disappointing night, the clouds rolled away, moon came out and it stayed windy. Just a Dotted Border, 3 Common and 1 small Quakers and Flies!

Plenty of Ectoedemia heringella mines on a sapling holm oak near the Bishop's Palace, Wells.  Strangely they ignored the much larger holm oaks on the fringe of Tor Hole Woods on the other side of the road.

The Luffia ferchaultella are back on the wall of the Dairy in Locking Rd, Weston-super-Mare after being absent since early summer last year. I counted 257 on 17th February and 425 on 18th February.

13.5degrees here at lunch time so out went the trap for first time this year. Its getting cold and the sky is clear So Far we have Spring Usher Agriopis leucophaearia. Its a first for the garden and here is hoping the cloud comes in later in the night.

14/2/19 - well, the moths were staying at home with a bottle of red to celebtrate Valentine's Day I think.  Whatever the reason (more likely the low temperature), there were only 2 in the MV trap, a Dotted Border and an Early Moth.

A bit of a surprise last evening, there were 3 more moths in my porch window, which must have escaped from the previous night's trapping when I was looking the other way.  Another Dotted Border, another Hebrew Character and an Acleris cristana, only my second record.  Yotal now 7 of 5 species.

A second visit to Berkley Marsh this year and another opportunity to put the moth trap out. The previous effort produced only 3 moths (Dark Chestnut, Angle Shades and Mottled Umber on 11th Jan) but Tues. 12th Feb provided an unexpected but welcome 21 moths (all but 4 outside the trap) of 9 species - Satellite 1, Hebrew Character 1, Early Moth 9, Dark Chestnut 1, Pale Brindled Beauty 2, Spring Usher 1 (first since 2012), Dotted Border 3, Chestnut 2 and the only micro, Agonopterix hericliana agg. 1. Tomorrow and Saturday look promising so hoping for a few more moths before returning to Middlesex.

12 moths of 9 species. All, bar Chestnut, FFY. Agonopterix heracliana (2) ; Tortricodes alternella (1) ; March Moth (1) ; Pale Brindled Beauty (1) ; Dotted Border (1) ; Chestnut (3) ; Grey Shoulder Knot (1) and Satellite (1).  The final species is probably either Acleris ferrugana or A.notana. One for Paul Wilkins and his scalpel.

4 moths here as well. Unsurprisingly 3/4 of them were firsts for the year. Common Quaker, Early Moth and Satellite were the firsts with a Chestnut completing the total. Early Moth was welcome as I missed out on it here last year.

Six moths on a warmer night last night. 3 Early Moth, 2 Common Quaker and a Chestnut. Roll on the spring !

12/2/19 - at last, some moths.  Only four, but that's twice as many as in the first 6 weeks of the year together.

Dotted Border, Early Moth, Pale Brindled Beauty and Hebrew Character.  It's a start.

Yesterday I spent an hour or so looking for early stages of micro moths on my local nature reserve on the outskirts of Frome. One of my target species was Bucculatrix nigricomella which is found on Oxeye Daisy. I eventually found a couple of mines and this larva preparing to pupate.

14.002 Bucculatrix nigricomella larva on Oxeye Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare)

Other early stages found were Coptotriche marginea mine on Bramble and feeding signs and silken web of Carcina quercana on both Bramble and Pendunculate Oak.

The first trapping for 3 weeks - still no moths.  To be fair it was cold enough for a slight frost.  Tonight's forecast looks more promising - I'll try again.

With moths at a premium I have had time to complete my 2018 records. I have a crude method of rating the year based on number of species recorded and the abundance of some of the most common. Although my method is flawed it does give a result that I can generally agree with.
I have been trapping in my garden for 16 years now and my base score is my first year here in 2003 with a rating of 100. The 2018 rating was 86 making it my 11th best year.
For anybody interested the top 5 years were

• 2004 with a rating of 122
• 2006......................117
• 2005......................109
• 2009......................108
• 2010......................105
  
  
• The worst 5 years have been
  • 2007.......................48
  • 2016.......................68
  • 2012.......................71
  • 2013.......................81
  • 2008.......................83[.
  
  
• I don't know if it proves anything but it is concerning that there does appear to be a downward trend.

.]

Pale Brindled Beauty at house lights this evening.  Surprisingly, it appears to be new for the 10km square.