Wildlife

James Lowen

The podium-topper was one of my favourite moths: I only get Mullein once a year, and I suspect that may have as much to do with garden buddleia as the mullein for which Norwich is renowned. But what a moth it is. Just look at it!

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17 April 2023 Mullein things over

Adders aside, I haven't done too much nature recently. Just the odd local pootle and some garden wildlife. I had been keeping an eye on our lawn's Red Dead Nettle (abundant this year here; is it like that everywhere?) in case a Hairy-footed Flower-bee turned up. (This being a species that was new to me as recently as last month.) And sure enough, one morning, one did.

And then look at it again, front on. It's donned one of those pointy Bolivian hats I used to wear in my 20s.

One nice night, with cloud cover and double-digit temps, I set up both traps, switched on the actinic and... completely forgot about the MV. So it was rather a relief to get a decent haul the following morning (although it did make me wonder what numbers would have been accrued with the more powerful bulb as well). Taking silver medal was a fresh-as-a-daisy Pine Beauty. What gorgeous creatures these are.

Tonight is looking interesting for moths, so I'll try and remember to run both traps. On this night last year, I had male Caloptilia hemidactylella and C. honoratella in adjacent compartments of the same egg tray. Perhaps lightning will strike twice. It would be good to add further records to the short paper I had a hand in writing about the species pair, which appeared in J. Ent. Rec.last month.