Mothing On The Go

~ judyheiser

I am now the proud owner of a battery-powered moth trap which will allow me to catch and report moths even when far away from a power source:

For the first time I can set the moth trap at the far end of the meadows, amongst the juniper bushes and pines which I know can support specific moths that don’t fly long distances. We planted these trees ourselves and it would be lovely to have evidence that they are creating their own little ecosystems around themselves

The trap has a 20W actinic light – a fluorescent tube that is high in UV and manufactured primarily to attract insects in the catering trade. The instructions for the battery, however, tell you to recharge it even if you’ve only done nine holes, so must be used mostly for golf. But it is small and powerful and can keep the moth trap bulb alight for ten hours. The control box on the trap has a light sensor, so everything will efficiently leap into action automatically at dusk and go off again at dawn.

The compact battery that is powering the new moth trap

I had wanted a mobile moth trap for ages, mainly to investigate what moths live in the wood, but was unsure of which system to buy. It was only when the Micro Moth Recorder for Kent come to visit the meadows this week, and I had a chance to talk to him about it, that I had the confidence to take the plunge.

I had run my old moth trap on the night before his visit and he was happy to go through the catch with me. This was a golden opportunity to learn from an expert rather than puzzle over things on my own and I found it extremely helpful. There are several types of moth that I struggle to identify and always used to just ignore. The plume group of moths is an example of one of these:

A plume moth in its distinctive resting posture. But which one of the many UK species is it?
I now know that this is a common plume because, if you look at the spurs on its leg, the outer spur is much shorter than the inner one. This is so simple, and I will not forget that now

In fact I have run the moth trap on three nights this week. There have been a lot Jersey tigers:

These are recent colonisers to the UK but are now well established in the south. Their larvae feed on a wide variety of herbaceous plants

There have also been gypsy moths in the trap. This is another moth that is quite newly arrived in the UK, although this one is far less welcome:

The English race of this moth lived in East Anglia and fed on bog-myrtle but became extinct around 1900 when its breeding sites were cleared and drained. However, the European race of the moth was accidentally introduced around 1995 and has become established. The caterpillars of this race have a taste for a much wider range of plants and can live in large numbers, unfortunately causing extensive damage to young oaks and poplars
The male has the most amazing antennae. This is because the female is flightless and emits pheromones to draw the male in to her, so he needs antennae with a very large surface area to be able to detect her pheromone in the air
A flightless female gypsy moth found living in the protection of a dormouse nest box back in August 2024
I find pugs another difficult group. This lime-speck pug, however, is one that is easy to ID

There is often a bycatch to be found in the moth trap. The cockchafer is an amazing beast:

And it too has noteworthy antennae:

I can tell this is a female because she has six ‘leaves’ on her fan-like antennae whereas the males have seven. Female cockchafers lay their eggs into the soil and the large, juicy larvae then spend three to five years growing underground – providing a great food source for birds probing the soil with their beaks

Ophion wasps are attracted to light and also regularly turn up in the trap, although they are difficult to identify down to species:

Looking like something out of a science fiction film, Ophion ichneumon wasps are nocturnal and parasitic. They lay their eggs into moth caterpillars which often feed on vegetation at night to avoid bird predation

Two young birds have been entertaining us in the meadows this week. The first is a kestrel:

We have also seen this kestrel hopping around in our front garden pursued by a crow
Only a third of young kestrels survive their first year so I really wish this little one all the best

The second young bird is a recently-fledged green woodpecker, which has also been bouncing around in our front garden, as well as appearing on many of the trail cameras:

A juvenile green woodpecker in the garden

Now that it is August, lesser knapweed and wild carrot are the dominant flowers amongst the grasses of the meadows:

It is also an extremely good berry year. The hawthorns and blackthorn are groaning with fruit:

The hawthorn berries in particular are extremely popular with the birds and this is always the first of the hedgerow fruit to disappear:

A magpie has already started feasting on the hawthorn

The female kestrel that was ringed in the meadows as a young bird in September 2019 is back and regularly hunting here. Is she the mother of the young kestrel now in the meadows? I hope so. Although her diet will be mostly rodents, we have also seen her with bumblebees, dragonflies and lizards over the years. She especially seems to have a taste for the great green bush crickets that hop and fly around the meadows in August:

The ringed female kestrel with a great green bush cricket. These are big crickets – a female will be 7cm long including her ovipositor

In fact we caught one of these crickets ourselves this week and photographed her before she was released back into the long grasses:

These large crickets can give us humans quite a bite so we were taking no chances and potted her up

As the adult kestrel patiently waits for her prey to reveal itself, she often gets bothered by magpies who take exception to her being here:

It is unusual to see a male kestrel in the meadows but one did come for a bath this week:

We always like to try to spot wasp spiders in the meadows in August and we found one this week:

These large spiders are grasshopper specialists, but here she has caught herself a flesh fly. You can see its red eyes under the web that the spider has wrapped around it:

The spider will often weave a zigzag stabilimentum in her web, although it is not yet fully understood why this is

Now that we know where this spider is, the grasses won’t be cut this year in a wide circle around her. This is to preserve the cocoon of eggs that she will soon be constructing somewhere close to her web and within which the next generation will overwinter.

John, one of the bird ringers, has spent a few recent mornings ringing in the wood. Although he understandably finds it difficult to take a photo on his phone whilst holding a bird in the other, he has sent me a photo of an adult marsh tit that he caught this week:

The marsh tit’s name is misleading because these birds primarily live in mature deciduous woodland with some understory in which to forage. But numbers have declined significantly recently and this species is now red-listed

But we know that they breed in our wood because last May we found a family of them in a dormouse box:

Photo from May 2024

John also sent me a photo of a sweet young robin that is going through a moult and now has a mix of adult and juvenile plumage:

I am no good at identifying fungi but this is a beautiful specimen that we found already knocked over in the wood:

The marjoram clearing is a riot of vegetation at this time of year with dogwood, rosebay willow herb and marjoram all jostling for space. The intense concentration of flowering plants within a woodland setting makes it a really special place:

On a sunny day it is heaving with invertebrates. White admirals and silver-washed fritillaries are both big, woodland-specialist butterflies that live there:

This white admiral was a bit battered but so wonderful to see
The underside of the white admiral
A female silver-washed fritillary
And the brighter orange male

There were many other species of butterfly that love the marjoram too. Here a comma demonstrates how it got its name:

Gatekeepers are easily distinguished with those double white spots within the black spot on their wings:

Even a hummingbird hawkmoth has found its way through the trees to reach the marjoram in the clearing:

This fly is quite an amazing sight, although my photos aren’t fantastic. Look at that strangely long skinny waist:

It is a fly in the genus Physocephala, probably Physocephala rufipes, the waisted bee grabber. It is a different conopid fly to the one I saw in the meadows last week, but this one also preys on red-tailed bumblebees.
Another view of the ridiculously stretched out waist of this Physocephala fly
The red-brown longhorn beetle, Stictoleptura rubra. We see these beetles in the marjoram clearing every year. Their larvae develop in the stumps of coniferous trees and, although our section of the wood doesn’t have any conifers, the wider wood does

A great many hoverflies were also visiting the flowers, including some very large and thankfully easy-to-identify ones such as this pellucid hoverfly, Volucella pellucens:

We think she looks a bit like Humpty Dumpty. This hoverfly is often found in woodland and lays her eggs in wasp nests, the larvae then living off the detritus in the nest

Scorpion flies, Panorpa communis, are extraordinary-looking things that feed on scavenged insects and we see lots of them every year in the clearing:

Those claspers at the end of the male’s abdomen are used in courtship displays

Now that it is August, I am finishing this week with the annual agapanthus photo. Situated at the threshold to the meadows, this plant looks spectacular set against the yellowing seed heads of the grasses at this time of year:

It is very nearly ten years since tentatively launching my first ever Walmermeadows post on 15th September 2015 and I have probably posted a photo of this agapanthus every August since then – it has become something of a tradition.

I am pleased to see that this year’s photo shows the agapanthus surrounded by lovely green grass. At one point earlier this summer I had thought we were heading in the same direction as 2022 when the annual agapanthus photo looked very different indeed:

Agapanthus is a native of South Africa and well adapted to drought

But thank goodness it has rained this summer, keeping the vegetation alive for all the invertebrates to successfully complete their lifecycles so that they can reemerge next year for us all to enjoy.

One thought on “Mothing On The Go”

  1. Congratulations on 10 years of blogging about your beautiful meadows and woodland. The new moth trap is a great wat of celebrating. 🙂

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