Overnight thunderstorms brought in a Latticed Heath.

Monday 5th September 2022.

My second Latticed Heath for the garden. I did get an individual last year of this pretty moth.

After last night's thunderstorm, I was expecting a rather damp moth box, but my rain guard paid off, keeping the contents of the box nice and dry and plenty of moths too. However, I still had to rescue a few moths from the rain that had gathered on top of the rain-guard and then empty the water from it that had settled. More rain is expected to arrive this afternoon on the Southerly winds, on what looks like a showery week ahead of us. That will save watering the garden with the watering can this week!

Cypress Pug. A familiar Autumn species in my garden.

Among the reasonable haul of moths, there was my first Latticed Heath of the year, a species that is normally associated with chalky downland and most likely a result from Portsdown Hill to the north. This is the second record I have had of this attractive moth in my garden; I believe I had one last year. A Cypress Pug was on the white sheet, a familiar species in the Autumn and a late Garden Tiger was present too within the moth box. Numbers of Pale Mottled Beauty have dropped considerably, with only Square-spot Rustics getting into double figures. A total of at least 74 moths of 35 species were recorded this morning.

Just the one Dark Sword-grass this morning in one of the egg trays.

I am going to have to get rid of a False Widow Spider that has taken up residence in one of the wire tubes on my moth box, as I saw it munching on one of my moths and nearby, a large Tube-web Spider was quite close to the white sheet! I could see its glowing green fangs reflecting the early morning light.    

Moths present this morning included the following:

• 2 Yellow-barred Brindle
• 2 Marbled Beauty
• 2 Garden Carpet
• 3 Double-striped Pug
• 1 Cypress Pug
• 1 Lime-speck Pug
• 10 Square-spot Rustic
• 1 Lesser Yellow Underwing   
• 8 Pale Mottled Willow
• 2 L-album Wainscot
• 1 Garden Tiger
• 2 Garden Carpet
• 1 Shuttle-shaped Dart
• 1 Large Yellow Underwing
• 2 Vine’s Rustic
• 1 Dark Sword-grass
• 4 Willow Beauty
• 1 Latticed Heath (NFY)
• 1 Setaceous Hebrew Character
• 2 Brimstone Moth
• 1 Turnip Moth
• 4 Common Plume
• 1 Light Brown Apple Moth
• 2 Box Tree Moth
• 3 Gold Triangle
• 3 Agriphila geniculea
• 2 Rusty-dot Pearl
• 1 Red-barred Tortrix
• 2 Apple Leaf Miner
• 1 Horse-chestnut Leaf Miner
• 1 Clepsis consimilana
• 2 Beautiful Plume
• 1 Garden Pebble
• 1 Tachystola acroxantha
• 1 Bryotropha affinis