GMS NEWS Spring 2009 GMS NEWS GMS News Week 9 Spring 2009 Twin-spot Quaker by Tony Williams Introduction and UK situation Dave Grundy So, What’s the News from Spring 2009? We’ve had records back from an amazing total of 257 gardens to date – well done to everyone who sent them in. This is a big increase on the 145 gardens that returned records for spring 2008 – so well done to you all. I’m hearing mixed stories of recorders doing much better in spring 2009, but with some doing poorly. So how do our collective statistics back this up? If you remember 2007 and 2008 were both very poor summers for moth numbers in gardens. 1 GMS NEWS Spring 2009 Hebrew Character, top of the charts for spring 2009 – D. Grundy Spring 2008 was also very poor, but if you remember back to 2007 then the spring was very warm and good for moths, going rapidly down hill in May. So will spring 2009 beat the awful spring for 2008 and will it come close to figures for the very good spring of 2007? Enough of the talk, now on with the charts for spring 2009. The following table shows the top 20 commonest moths across all of our gardens: Britain & Ireland Spring GMS Totals Top Twenty Species Name Total Average / Comments Position Moths garden 1 Hebrew Character 8351 32.49 2 Common Quaker 7866 30.61 3 Small Quaker 4258 16.57 Not CI 4 Clouded Drab 2434 9.47 5 Early Grey 1576 6.13 6 Early Thorn 709 2.76 7 Twin-spotted Quaker 632 2.46 8 Oak Beauty 471 1.83 Not EE,NE 9 Brindled Beauty 391 1.52 Not IR,NE,NW,CI 10 March Moth 386 1.50 Not NE 11 Chestnut 317 1.23 Not NW 12 Double-striped Pug 282 1.10 13 Red Chestnut 281 1.09 Not WM,EE,EM,IR,SE,CI 14 Shuttle-shaped Dart 238 0.93 Not IR,SC,CI 15 Muslin Moth 231 0.90 Not NE,NW,SC 16 = Brimstone Moth 230 0.89 16 = Flame Shoulder 230 0.89 18 Dotted Border 178 0.69 Not NE,NW,SE,CI 2 GMS NEWS Spring 2009 19 Powdered Quaker 168 0.65 Not NW,SE,CI 20 Early Tooth-striped 117 0.46 Only SC Nothing 257 1.00 (The Comments column shows areas where the species are not on the recording form – usually because it is rare in this area) So, the commonest moth we recorded was Hebrew Character for the second year running, with a total of 8,351 moths seen and an average of 32.49 per garden over the 9 weeks. The average per garden shows a big increase on 2008 when the average was only 20.06. The bottom row marked ‘Nothing’ is a measure of how many weeks there were when moth-trappers put their traps out and recorded no moths at all. By chance this gives a total of exactly 257 blank weeks between us giving an average of one week out of nine with an empty trap across all gardens. This is lower than the average of 1.35 recorded in 2008. So between us we had less empty traps than in 2008, which suggests a better spring for us. The ‘Spring Big 5’ were again the commonest species across our gardens, these are Hebrew Character, Common Quaker, Small Quaker, Clouded Drab and Early Grey. The first three species are by far the commonest. Occasionally Twin- spotted Quaker can be nearly common enough to qualify in a ‘Spring Big 6’, but it was a long way behind in 2009. Early Thorn, had an excellent spring – DaveGrundy Early Thorn had an excellent spring moving up from an average of 1.26 per garden to 2.76 per garden. Pic shows characteristic resting pose, butterfly fashion, of Early Thorn. Red Chestnut did well in Spring 2009 to reach 13th place with records mostly coming from Wales, Scotland and SW England. Powdered Quaker only just makes it into our top 20 and may be a species for us to worry about as it seems to be in decline, with good numbers only coming from the East of England with an average of 2.46 per garden. Finally it will be a surprise for most of us to see Early Tooth-striped in the top 20. This species is only recorded in Scotland in the GMS, so it is a sign of just how common it is that Scottish gardens record an average of 7.80 per garden to take the species into the top 20! Another interesting feature to see from this chart is how some species that are common in our gardens are just not seen in other gardens. For 3 GMS NEWS Spring 2009 instance I hadn’t realised that Shuttle-shaped Dart is scarce in Scotland and Small Quaker is scarce in the Channel Isles (I had just assumed they were common everywhere!). Comparisons can now be made for West Midlands records for the first 9 weeks in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Unfortunately we don’t have enough data yet to make these comparisons for other parts of the UK. A comparison of the fortunes of the ‘Spring Big 5’ and Twin-spotted Quaker is shown in the graph below: West Midland Garden Moth Records - 6 Common Spring Species - 2004 to 2009 30.00 25.00 20.00 15.00 10.00 Average NumbersAverage of Moths per Garden 5.00 0.00 123456 Year Common Quaker Hebrew Character Small Quaker Clouded Drab Early Grey Twin-spotted Quaker The graph shows well that this is the best spring for Hebrew Character since West Midlands GMS spring records began in 2004. Small Quaker, Common Quaker and Hebrew Character all appear to have populations fluctuating in parallel. The other three species are also fluctuating at lower levels but roughly in parallel. 2009 was a good spring for all of these species. So Which are the Commonest Ten Species in each GMS area? Top 10 GMS Species for All Areas – Spring 2009 (a) Channel Isles (6) Wales (31) East England (24) East Midlands (17) Species Avge./ Species Avge./ Species Avge./ Species Avge./ garden garden garden garden 1 C Quaker 37.50 H Character 46.10 C Quaker 30.13 H Character 14.59 2 H Character 22.67 C Quaker 34.68 H Character 29.04 C Quaker 12.12 3 Early Grey 17.33 C Drab 18.55 S Quaker 12.25 Early Grey 6.18 4 S-s Dart 9.50 S Quaker 10.45 C Drab 11.88 C Drab 4.88 5 C Drab 7.67 Early Grey 9.03 Early Grey 5.13 Early Thorn 1.06 6 E Thorn 7.50 E Thorn 4.94 P Quaker 2.46 S Quaker 0.88 4 GMS NEWS Spring 2009 7 F Shoulder 6.83 Brindled 4.58 T-s Quaker 2.08 S-s Dart 0.82 Beauty 8 Oak Beauty 4.67 T-s Quaker 3.94 S-s Dart 1.58 March Moth 0.71 9 T-s Quaker 4.33 Oak Beauty 3.77 Brimstone 1.42 Muslin 0.71 10 D-s Pug Red Chestnut 3.61 D-s Pug 1.38 LB Apple 0.53 Moth Nothing 0.33 Nothing 0.29 Nothing 0.88 Nothing 1.88 Top 10 GMS Species for All Areas – Spring 2009 (b) Ireland (7) North East (2) North West (16) Scotland (15) Species Avge./ Species Avge./ Species Avge./ Species Avge./ garden garden garden garden 1 H Character 33.71 H Character 30.00 C Quaker 32.81 H Character 47.47 2 C Quaker 21.00 C Drab 14.50 H Character 29.63 C Quaker 42.80 3 C Drab 12.29 C Quaker 10.00 C Drab 11.06 C Drab 15.27 4 Early Grey 10.29 Red Chestnut 5.00 S Quaker 8.13 E Tooth- 7.80 striped 5 E Thorn 8.00 Yellow 3.00 Early Grey 5.94 Chestnut 4.87 Horned 6 March Moth 3.86 Early Grey 2.00 T-s Quaker 2.69 Red 3.67 Chestnut 7 T-s Quaker 2.00 Garden 1.00 E Thorn 2.56 T-s Quaker 2.80 Carpet 8 S Quaker 1.86 Engrailed 1.00 March Moth 1.38 Brindled 2.67 agg. Pug 9 Dotted 1.43 S Quaker 1.00 Oak Beauty 1.38 Yellow 2.60 Border Horned 10 P Quaker 1.00 Chestnut 1.00 E subpurp - 1.25 S Quaker 2.07 urella Nothing 1.71 Nothing 1.00 Nothing 0.81 Nothing 2.20 Top 10 GMS Species for All Areas – Spring 2009 (c) South East (29) South West (40) West Midlands (52) York / Humber (18) Species Avge./ Species Avge./ Species Avge./ Species Avge./ garden garden garden garden 1 S Quaker 71.10 H Character 41.95 H Character 28.25 H Character 26.50 2 C Quaker 50.31 C Quaker 27.55 C Quaker 25.27 C Quaker 23.78 3 H Character 25.34 S Quaker 11.25 S Quaker 17.04 C Drab 9.50 4 Early Grey 8.21 Early Grey 5.58 C Drab 6.75 Early Grey 5.11 5 C Drab 6.69 C Drab 5.20 Early Grey 4.44 S Quaker 2.83 6 S-s Dart 3.00 E Thorn 3.63 E Thorn 2.44 White-s H- 1.50 moth 7 Oak Beauty 2.79 T-s Quaker 3.45 T-s Quaker 2.15 E Thorn 1.50 5 GMS NEWS Spring 2009 8 Brimstone 2.59 Oak Beauty 3.03 Oak Beauty 1.62 P Quaker 1.06 9 D-s Pug 2.48 F Shoulder 2.43 March Moth 1.25 Chestnut 0.72 10 T-s Quaker 2.41 Muslin 2.40 Brindled 1.17 Twenty- 0.50 Beauty plume Nothing 0.45 Nothing 1.00 Nothing 1.42 Nothing 1.11 (The figure in brackets is the number of gardens for that area, eg.