Nature Notes
Nature Notes
YES, it was true, the weather forecasters were right and North West Norfolk experienced tropical weather for a few days in early October. Please read on.
Quite early in my natural history career (in 1948) I started to use a mercury-vapour moth light to further my studies of these insects. I have continued this study ever since, switching my light on every night between March and November.
There are some 2,500 species of moths in the UK which have been lumped rather unscientifically into two groups known as macro and micro moths. In those early years I concentrated on the macro moths, of which some 900 were illustrated in a few books. The 1,600 micro moths were not illustrated at all and to make matters even more difficult most had only a scientific name.
Also, in those early days in Norfolk there were only four or five entomologists using mercury-vapour moth lures. At present there are about 50 of these mercury-vapour lamps in use in the county.
In 2004 I published a list of 457 macro moths found in the parish of Holme. In that year four other enthusiasts were using mercury-vapour lures in our parish; and we formed an ad-hoc committee to further our interests. The parish list now stands at 481.
This autumn, on October 14, I went out to the garden to see what moths had been lured to my light. A small moth with rather striking wing markings sat in the light box. Obviously it was a micro moth.
I quickly potted it thinking that it should be fairly easy to identify. From the head to end of body it measured only one centimetre. Its wings were the colour of burnt umber with ragged white ribbon-like bands across its wings. A thin white line ran along the end of each wing with a couple of roundish white blobs along each fringe line.
I was in fact quickly able to identify this moth in “British Pyramid Moths”. Its only name was Hymenia Recurvalis, but I was not at all prepared for the surprising text information given in the book.
This tiny moth had only first been recorded in the UK in 1951 in Dorset and Surrey. Since then there had been few other records from southern England. It was a migrant from the tropics where it is widespread.
I needed help quickly and my friend Gary Hibberd (Warden at the Holme Dunes Nature Reserve) came to excitedly verify my identification. Photographs were take of the moth through the glass pot, as I dared not take it out until other friends had seen it.
Jon Clifton of Anglian Lepidopterist Supplies told me that this moth had not been recorded before in Norfolk and that “it is certainly one of the highlights of the mothing year in Norfolk”. Before releasing the moth I was able to take some photos of it on a spinach leaf. The book also told me that this small moth can be a pest of cotton, spinach, maize, beet and soya crops, but unlikely ever to be a pest in the UK.
Moths can be seen in every month of the year, but obviously many less in mid-winter. Two quite common noctuid moths flying this month and next are the green-brindled crescent and the December moth. Many come to ivy blossom.
PETER CLARKE
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Weather for King's Lynn
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
