Few moths, but a couple of 'Year-ticks'.

Saturday 23rd August 2025.

Dawn over our Cottage.

After getting up at around 4am and simply could not fall back to sleep, I decided to get up and dressed and put the dogs in the garden briefly and then made myself a coffee. It was obviously still dark outside, but a Little Owl was calling close to our Cottage, but no chance of a sighting. My Moth Box was up and running, but all I could see were Grass-moths by the Box, so I waited till around 5.45am to venture out to see if anything of note was around.

My Moth Box:

Common Wave. My first of the year.

It looked as though it was going to be a lovely day again, with plenty of blue sky as the sun rose behind the Cottage. A thin film of mist was over the field behind the trees (I could just see through the gap in the trees. Sadly, there were only 17 moths of 7 species this morning, which was probably due to it being quite cold and clear overnight. However, two of those species were new for the year that included a Common Wave and the micro moth, Garden Rose Tortrix. I knew there were going to be a lot of Grass-moths and most likely, there were probably more around, though finding any moth against the outside wall of the Cottage was a bit of a challenge!

Left, my first Garden Rose Tortrix of the year and right, one of ten Common Grass-moths.

The Moths recorded this morning included the following:

MACRO MOTHS	MICRO MOTHS
Large Yellow Underwing x1	Common Grass-moth x10
Light Emerald x1	Garden Rose Tortrix x1 *
Brimstone Moth x2	Rusty-dot Pearl x1
Common Wave x1 *

As dawn arose, the birds started coming out and overhead, I could hear the ‘buzzing’ calls of House Martins as a flock of four birds flew high over and eventually joined by a few Swallows. In the trees, a pair of Goldcrests were hunting for insects and a male Chaffinch flew in briefly. I shall take the dogs for a good walk after I have written up this entry to my blog; so more sightings to follow, hopefully.