The Red Underwing moth in the top photo was a New For Garden today. It wasn’t in the trap, but lurking nearby. Luckily, I was nimbler with this moth than I was with the closely related Clifden Nonpareil and was able to get a reasonable shot of it it the climbing rose, showing part of the red underwing. It’s a large moth and only just fitted in my biggest pot.
Also New For Garden was a Rush Veneer. It has the unique distinction of being the last moth in my field guide for micro moths.
Other New For Garden moths included Double-striped Pug, Pandemis heparana – Dark Fruit-tree Moth, Eupocelia angustana, Celypha lacunana, White-shouldered House-moth – Endrosis sarcitrella and Agriphila geniculea. See photo below – reminiscent of The Clangers. Needless to say, with this list of mostly micro moths, Trevor was on hand to ID them. We were bird ringing this morning and I put the contents of the trap in a holding cage and took them with me. Most micros are a step too far for me. This is only my second year of recording, so the New For Garden records do not mean that the moth is unusual, just that they have not been recorded from my garden before now.
I also had a first with bird ringing – a juvenile Whitethroat. I will admit that I struggled to ID the first bird (I was lucky enough to ring two this morning). In the ringer’s grip, I had my hand around its throat so couldn’t see how white it was and the pale eyering is not as marked in juveniles. Its neck feathers were a bit ruffled from where I had held it but it was a smart bird with gingery-brown edges to some of the wing feathers.
Natural history of the Bailiwick of Guernsey 