GMS News Spring 2019 Weeks 1-9 Contents Editorial Norman Lowe 1 Overview GMS 2019 1st Quarter Evan Lynn 2 Down my Way (Contd) David Baker 14 Star Wars Super Wedding - answers to last edition’s puzzle Nonconformist 16 Moth Spiral No.2 Nonconformist 17 Tailpiece Norman Lowe 18 Communications & links GMS sponsors Editorial – Norman Lowe As I write this, my recent garden trapping has been quite uneventful. In fact until last week I hadn’t had a single hawk-moth of any description so it was good to find a Small Elephant Hawk- moth last Saturday morning. Oddly, the only other hawk I’d seen in Breconshire was Narrow- bordered Bee Hawk-moth, rediscovered in the county for the first time since 1926! As usual there’s plenty of interest in this edition but we have been especially reliant on just a few stalwart contributors. We start with Evan’s usual roundup in which he turns his spotlight on the catches on two widely separated islands, Alderney and Skye. Not surprisingly he finds big differences! He also takes a look at one of our commonest moths, Common Quaker, finding that 2019 was a particularly good year for it. David Baker continuers his series on non-moth occupants of traps, including some with strange- sounding names as the Downlooker Snipefly. And we finish our articles with the puzzle section, this time featuring Moth Spiral No.2. As you’ll already have read in the GMS Annual report, we had a very successful conference at Bamford Village Institute, Derbyshire on 31 March. As always, we are very dependent on volunteers to organise these events and we are grateful to Sally Soady for taking this on. Since finding volunteers for this has always been a challenge we are very pleased that we have provisional venues for both 2020 (Idle Valley Nature Reserve near Retford) and 2021 (Apperley Village Hall, Gloucestershire). And of course we have our first regional conference at RSPB Leighton Moss on July 6 which is almost fully booked now. 1 st Overview GMS 2019 1 Quarter – Evan Lynn This year the emergence of overwintering moths was greatly influenced by events in February when a combination of deep depressions in the Atlantic and dominant high pressures over the continent dragged up unseasonably warm weather from the Azores. March then suddenly changed with the Norse goddess Freya riding her chariot high above the storm clouds. In her wake came Gareth, and Hannah brought April to an end. In between there was varied weather ranging from Arctic cold to Grecian hot. Our beekeeping neighbour says that for the bees at least, the season has moved forward by three weeks this year and in our Vice County (46) we have had several instances of unseasonably early emergences of moths including the Hebrew Character and Engrailed. Yearly Comparisons Despite the unseasonably warm period in February and the cold and turbulent March the moth numbers did pick up in early April to equal those of last year which was the best year since 2012 (Fig 1). Fig 1. GMS 2010 - 2019 Q1. Mean Quarterly Moth Numbers Temperature and Catches The extreme weather with strong to gale force winds and cold nights resulted in large numbers of empty traps this quarter (Fig 2). Even when the daytime temperatures were pleasant, clear skies brought cold nights especially towards the end of April when the temperatures plummeted. 2 Fig 2. GMS 2019 Q1. Average Minimum Temperature and Empty Traps All regions suffered empty traps to some degree, due possibly to differing exposures to the wind and low night time temperatures. The North East and Ireland were the two regions worst affected (fig 3), so pity those individual recorders who had to cope with four & eight weeks of no catches respectively. Only the more southern regions escaped lightly apart from one recorder in the South East who had five demoralising weeks of empty traps. Fig 3. GMS 2019 Q1. Percentage Number of Empty Traps in Each Region Perhaps these depressing results can be explained in Figures 4 & 5 which show the number of air frost days and the average minimum temperatures for this quarter. 3 Fig 4. Days of Air Frost for March & April 2019 (with permission of the Met Office) Fig 5. Mean Minimum Temperatures for March & April 2019 (with permission of the Met Office) Despite the large number of empty traps there were good numbers of moths overall this quarter with the numbers caught following to a lesser or greater degree the average minimum temperatures as shown in figure 6. 4 Fig 6. GMS 2019 Q1. Minimum Night Temperatures and Total Moths Caught Regional Comparison In previous reports I have compared the catches and temperatures between two regions. This quarter I have selected the Channel Islands which have only one island in the scheme (Alderney) and the Island of Skye in Scotland; both regions conveniently have two recorders. The catches of core species for the two islands (fig 7) are quite different with Skye starting well but dropping back until week 7 but losing out again in week 9. The rolling or moving averages of both islands reflect the variations for each week. Fig 7. GMS 2019 Q1. No. of Core Moths Caught in Skye and Alderney The minimum temperatures (fig 8) do help to partly explain the differences in the catches; for example, in week 2 temperatures are just recovering in Skye while on Alderney there was no such temperature drop. Similarly, in week 6 lower temperatures reduced catches on both islands. Conversely, the lower drop in temperatures in week 9 had no apparent effect on catches on Alderney. 5 Fig 8. GMS 2019 Q1. Minimum Temperatures in Skye and Alderney Wind can also affect catches with higher speeds reducing flying activity and its direction increasing the possibility of more moths being blown in from the adjacent mainland. The direction and wind speed for each evening this quarter are shown in figure 9. The days that the two traps were set are also shown above the bars which may help to show why catches were higher or lower each week compared to the other island. Fig 9. GMS 2019 Q1. Evening Wind Speeds and Wind Direction in Skye and Alderney Skye Northerly Easterly Southerly Westerly 4 4 8 2 2 3 7 7 8 9 1 1 6 6 3 5 9 5 March April Wk 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Moths 25 1 4 4 28 10 46 82 46 6 Alderney Northerly Easterly Southerly Westerly 33 9 1 1 2 6 2 6 5 4 5 77 9 4 88 March April Wk 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Moths 11 10 23 37 40 24 47 51 63 The variety of species caught on each island is also interesting. Alderney, as to be expected, being south and close to the continent had 31 core species compared with 19 on Skye. In line with this, Alderney attracted a total of 281 moths to the 242 on Skye. It might be interesting to wonder if the difference in numbers was due more to the wind than the temperature since both are windswept islands with Skye receiving more of the wild March weather. As mentioned before, only the core species are included as each region has moths regularly found but which may not occur in the other regions. A list and total numbers of these species are shown in Tables 1a & 1b with the species common to both islands highlighted in green. Table 1 a. GMS 2019 Q1. No of Core Moth Species caught on Skye Vernacular wk1 wk2 wk3 wk4 wk5 wk6 wk7 wk8 wk9 Total Brown Silver-line 3 11 14 Chestnut 1 1 Clouded Drab 3 1 13 9 8 34 Common Quaker 3 9 1 2 5 20 Dark Sword-grass 1 4 5 Dotted Border 5 5 Dusky Thorn 1 1 Early Grey 2 1 1 1 2 7 Hebrew Character 1 1 2 9 6 18 17 3 57 Mottled Grey 6 1 7 Powdered Quaker 3 9 4 16 Red Chestnut 6 2 1 3 2 8 31 6 59 Red Sword-grass 1 1 2 Satellite 1 1 Silver Y 1 1 Small Quaker 2 2 Small Square-spot 8 8 Spruce Carpet 1 1 Streamer 1 1 7 Table 1 b. GMS 2019 Q1. No of Core Moth Species caught on Alderney Vernacular wk1 wk2 wk3 wk4 wk5 wk6 wk7 wk8 wk9 Total Angle Shades 4 1 1 4 2 1 13 Brimstone Moth 1 1 3 5 Clouded Drab 1 1 1 2 5 Common Plume 1 1 2 Common Quaker 1 3 22 11 5 14 12 11 79 Common Wainscot 1 1 Dotted Border 1 1 1 1 4 Double-striped Pug 1 1 1 1 2 3 6 5 4 24 Early Grey 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 2 16 Early Thorn 1 1 1 3 Flame Shoulder 1 2 1 4 Garden Carpet 1 1 1 3 Hebrew Character 1 2 11 5 15 3 5 5 10 57 Herald 1 1 Least Black Arches 1 1 2 4 Light Brown Apple Moth 1 1 1 3 3 3 12 Many-plume Moth 1 1 Muslin Moth 1 2 3 6 Oak Beauty 1 1 1 3 Pale Pinion 1 1 1 3 Pine Beauty 1 1 1 1 2 6 Red-Green Carpet 1 2 3 Rusty-dot Pearl 1 1 Shuttle-shaped Dart 1 1 1 1 4 Silver Y 1 1 1 3 Small Dusty Wave 1 1 Small Quaker 1 1 1 2 5 Swallow Prominent 1 1 Twin-spotted Quaker 2 2 1 1 1 1 8 V-Pug 1 1 White-shouldered House Moth 1 1 2 Statistics When compared to last year this quarter has brought some surprises with large increases in the numbers of many moths, notably the Orthosia species including the Common, Small,Twin- spotted Quakers and the Clouded Drab.