Peter Jones, "Hampshire Diary"
• Thursday, August 20, 2009 - Improvements to the Moth trap
A couple of sessions with the Moth trap recently. I noticed that the mercury vapour bulb didn't seem to be "lighthouse" strength recently, and on reading up on them, discovered that they degrade gradually, while still using up the same amount of electricity! So, I changed the bulb, and also moved the trap about 3 metres to a spot where it shines over 5 more gardens (!), and has a larger view of clear sky. Fortunately the gardens are all bungalows, so the light doesn't affect the neighbours.
All this change resulted in a marked improvement in the catch. The first session, on a night of cloud and drizzle, the catch was pushing 100 moths, with all the egg cartons at capacity! New species for me were:
The Olive
White-point
Six-striped Rustic
Scorched Carpet
Common Carpet
A couple of nights later, I ran the trap but in clear sky, and the catch was much smaller, around 30 moths. I still got some quality though, with the following new species:
Flounced Rustic
Marbled Beauty
Pine Carpet
Very few Hawkmoths this year, only a couple of Poplars, which is a shame. Still have hopes of pulling in a rarer Hawkmoth one of these days! |
Post A Comment! :: Send to a Friend!
|
|
|
|
|
