One month anniversary

I celebrated my 1 month anniversary of getting back to moth trapping this evening with a somewhat unexpected group of uninvited but very welcome party guests, first and by all means least was a rather annoying bat which was flying back and forth across the garden for nearly an hour probably thinking it had found the bat equivalent to a drive-thru burger bar. Second I was joined by 2 rather cute but shy mice who scurried repeatedly up and down the garden path to check around the base of the bird table for any scraps. Third guest was a very startled fox which wasn't expecting to see me when it clambered over the garden fence, it didn't hang round for long, in fact it clambered back up the fence immediately mainly because one of my German Shepherds was heading right for it with an 'I'm not amused' look on his face. The last guest of the night was the biggest surprise and it came in the shape of a huge hedgehog, I've never seen a hedgehog in our garden before but it could explain why the number of slugs has been dropping in recent weeks.

Anyway.....I did some moth trapping too and got quite a large haul which included one new to my garden species getting me up to a total of 77 identified species of macro moths which isn't bad for 31 days worth!(only 26 nights trapping). The Old Lady and the Poplar Hawk didn't actually go into the trap, the Old Lady 'crashed' into the bushes next to it then fell onto the sheet and the Poplar Hawk landed on the side of it.

The trap was out from 8:45pm till 3:30am

Tonight's Log

33 Large Yellow Underwing
7 Lesser Yellow Underwing
12 Lesser Broad Bordered Yellow Underwing
2 Broad Bordered Yellow Underwing
14 Riband Wave
2 Silver-Y
6 Common Rustic
1 Shuttle Shaped Dart
8 Willow Beauty
3 Flame Shoulder
5 Lempke's Gold Spot

1 Gold Spot
2 Lime-Speck Pug
2 Setaceous Hebrew Character

1 Uncertain
1 Poplar Hawk

1 Old Lady

1 Canary Shouldered Thorn
1 Copper Underwing
2 Swallow Prominent(see photo above)(ID Thanks to Dean)