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What's your biggest catch of moths?
Posted by Graeme Lyons , Friday, 11 February 2011 13:48
Mothing in the early spring can be very disappointing. In my garden when I was a kid I usually did not even catch a single moth until April. When we put the trap out at Woods Mill on Wednesday night this week we caught 20 moths and I was quite pleased with that. It reminded me of something quite surprising that happened in 2009 at Woods Mill. I put the trap out for the first time that year, a bit later than usual as I had been to Australia for the whole of February, it was the night of the 12th March 2009. It was unseasonably mild but I did not expect this!
It is to this day by far the largest number of individual moths I have ever caught in a single Robinson trap. 905 moths, 737 of which were a single species: Small Quaker. Here is the full list:
Small Quaker 737
Common Quaker 78
Hebrew Character 19
Twin-spot Quaker 10
Dotted Border 9
Clouded Drab 9
Shoulder-stripe 5
Oak Beauty 5 (top photo)
Small Brindled Beauty 5
Chestnut 4
Lead-coloured Drab 2
March Moth 1
Satellite 1
Tortricodes alternella 19
Parsnip Moth 1
Dytiscus marginalis 1
Mid summer usually holds the greatest totals where I have trapped before over the last twenty years, even when I have trapped in woodland before in spring so it was a real surprise. It was so much bigger than the next biggest catch I've recorded which was under 500 moths. I would love to know more about huge anomalous catches, please comment if you have experienced anything like this and particularly if you caught more in a single Robinson trap. I have heard stories about people estimating Silver-Ys by counting how many fit in a pint glass and then counting the number of pint glasses!
Posted in
That’s really interesting. Amazing the natural abundance. Makes me think about the rates numbers fall off with predation (and dispersal?) after a large emergence of an abundant sp. I was just comparing your list with ours of the nearest date - 17/3/2009 - when we had 196 moths, also in an overnight Robinson trap, at Flimwell. It was a similar range but only 101 Small Quaker – I wonder if there would have been a massive haul like yours if we’d trapped a few nights earlier. Also interestingly, there were no March Moth or Tortricodes on that date (though on 27/2/2009 we had 31 and 22 respectively):
Small Quaker 101
Common Quaker 49
Twin-spotted Quaker 12
Hebrew Character 9
Oak Beauty 6
Clouded Drab 5
Yellow Horned 5
Double-striped Pug 3
Dotted Border 2
Pale Brindled Beauty 2
Chestnut 1
Early Grey 1