NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

There was a time when I would post with wild abandon on this blog, sometimes 200+ posts a year - admittedly, some of these posts would not pass a quality control filter but never the less it was an enjoyable process to come up with a subject matter, gather together a few words, select an image or two and send the whole package off into cyberspace. I was lucky enough to have a loyal band of visitors, many of whom would leave comments which sometimes created their own threads, some of these becoming a virtual game of tennis where words rather than balls would be metaphorically knocked back and forth over a net. Traffic to the blog was, as times, very healthy indeed, and although I was never in this blogging lark for the numbers game it was quite humbling to know that what was being created had an audience. Things started to quieten down a couple of years ago. The first sign of my partial withdrawal was to close down of the ability for visitors to comment. This was a result of an increasi...

First up is the smart looking tortrix moth Agapeta zoegana . It is relatively common, the larvae feeding on knapweed, and is met with annually in the garden MV. However, it comes in two forms. The one usually encountered is a real looker, a concoction of banana-yellow and milk chocolate. The other, known as ferrugana replaces the yellow with a frothy cappuccino brown (above, right). I hadn't knowingly seen this form until last week, both handily coming to the MV on the morning of August 9th. 'The Smaller Moths of Surrey', published in 2012, suggests that ferrugana "occurs occasionally in the county at a low density." My checking of the MV during this hot weather has not really produced the hoped for 'good' migrant or wanderer, but this disappointment was suspended on the morning of August 5th when this bizarre moth was trapped - a gynandromorph Gypsy Moth, half female, half male. The male half in the above images is exhibited on the left hand side of the...

A strange night for the Banstead MV - very few moths, even though the temperature didn't dip under 15C, but the meagre pickings did include three Jersey Tigers, two Dark-sword Grass (below) and another Gypsy Moth (above), my third of the summer. Prior to this year I had recorded just a single of this species, on 18th August 2012. It seems as if it has finally colonised the area, having already conquered the area to the north of here. I still await my first Oak Processionary however... We have a few Lavender plants in the garden, which are always good for a bit of insect action, and I was more than pleased to spy this bug  -  Corizus hyoscyami  -  scuttling along the stems and investigating the flowerheads. A lifer!

It is at least 20 years since I have recorded Garden Tiger (above) in the back garden MV. So to find a single lurking there this morning was quite notable. The other main highlight(s) were the 2nd and 3rd garden records of Gypsy Moth (below), alas not a rare migrant here but a coloniser via accidental introduction.

It was oppresively muggy last night, the temperature here in Banstead not dropping any lower than 18 degrees C. I woke from a fitful sleep at about 3AM and decided to get a drink of water and, while up, check the moth trap in the back garden. The MV is placed against a white wall and this wall was well populated by resting moths - mainly Willow Beauties, but also an individual that set my alarm bells ringing - where had I seen that before? It then registered that it was a male Gypsy Moth, a species I hadn't in fact seen anywhere, macro number 389 for the garden! With the current weather conditions and plenty of migrant activity on the south and east coasts I would like to think that this is a primary migrant. However, there is a small population of this species in South London that DEFRA are trying to eradicate, so it could conceivably be a wanderer from there, although if I were a betting man I would bet against it. For all I know the men from the government have killed them ...