Plumed Fan-foot added to the life list!

Tuesday 6th September 2022

Not a quality photo due to where this very rare moth was situated in the garden, but my first ever Plumed Fan-foot nonetheless. I am just hoping it will return by the box sometime today. 

Yet another thunderstorm last night produced a deluge of rain, of which I stood by the front door and had to watch the rain come down in torrents! I do love watching thunderstorms, but I can see why this Global Warming is producing some extreme weather conditions. More are predicted throughout the week and today, I have seen on the early morning news, there is a south-westerly stream of heavy rain coming in throughout the day.

A familiar moth for this time of year, the Lesser Yellow Underwing.

Everything was sodden in the garden, but at least it did the plants some good as Isabelle's Sunflowers she planted earlier this summer, are nearly all coming out in bloom! The outside egg trays resting on the moth box are completely sodden, but it still held some hardy moths for me to look at. It wasn't till I was virtually packing my moth box away and covering up the top with the rain guard, that I spotted something interesting perched in a difficult location nearly out of my reach.

Another familiar moth for this time of year, the Turnip Moth. However, there numbers do fluctuate.

On closer inspection, I had an idea what it was and so I took a few quick photos and then grabbed a pot to catch the moth. Unfortunately, though I managed to pot it, it was too quick for me and flew out of the pot before I could get the lid on and flew behind the moth box and out of sight. Fume! On checking the photos, I am happy that it is the rare immigrant moth, Plumed Fan-foot and have put a photo on the Hants Moths Facebook page for confirmation. This will be a ‘lifer’ for me if confirmed. A total of 70 moths of 27 species were noted this morning. Last night, there was an Old Lady and a few Box Tree Moths present by the moth box, they disappeared by the morning.  

The Latticed Heath was present again in the moth box, but I had to rescue it from a Spiders web. 

Moths present this morning included the following:

• 1 Plumed Fan-foot (NFY + LIFER)
• 3 Lesser Yellow Underwing
• 1 Yellow-barred Brindle
• 7 Double-striped Pug
• 9 Willow Beauty   
• 8 Square-spot Rustic
• 1 Turnip Moth
• 3 Large Yellow Underwing
• 2 Brimstone Moth
• 8 Pale Mottled Willow
• 1 Garden Carpet
• 2 Vine’s Rustic
• 3 L-album Wainscot
• 1 Dark Sword-grass
• 1 Latticed Heath
• 1 Marbled Beauty
• 3 Small Dusty Wave
• 1 Lime-speck Pug
• 4 Common Plume
• 1 Agriphila geniculea
• 1 Rush Veneer
• 1 Mint Moth
• 1 Beautiful Plume
• 1 Gypsonoma dealbana
• 2 Rusty-dot Pearl
• 3 Apple Leaf Miner
• 1 Light Brown Apple Moth