I
have become engrossed in moth recording and keep putting blogging off till
tomorrow - apologies to you all. While inputting and updating Dave’s and my own
records I started wondering what the impact of a wet year is having on our moth
catches. June was poor with only recoding 79 species compared to 130 in 2011 in
my own garden but I actually had my best July since I began mothing so the variety
of species is not a problem, What is horrifying is that in the period January
to July I only trapped 6000 moths compared to 10,000 last year in the same
period. Dave is showing an even more dramatic decline in his garden with 14,000
last year to 5000 this year. Ok its only 2 gardens but when I rang round
trapping friends they all were reporting at least a 40% decline so that starts
to become a frightening statistic if you start thinking on a county or National
level, and that’s just moths. Dragonfly and Butterfly recorders are reporting a
bad year as well so not surprisingly many bird species have either failed to
breed or did not bother having a second brood and cleared out early. Certainly
the lack of second broods amongst the warblers at the pond is very noticeable.
I also discovered we had been a wee too enthusiastic in our
identification with some of our micro moths so had to revisit our photos and
knock a few off. Might have been disastrous for us but we have already caught
another potential 24 micros to add to our list this month so no harm done and a
good learning curve.
Met up with Dave at the Just So for lunch had a walk around
the Bridge Nursery garden and Napton Reservoir. A few butterflies and
dragonflies noted at the nursery while Napton Reservoir had 2 Pochard, Reed
Warbler, Sedge Warbler, Whitethroat, Raven and Buzzard. There were high numbers
of Southern and Brown Hawker dragonflies plus 3 Grass Snake sunning themselves
despite a cool light north westerly breeze.
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