It's been a bit quiet on the birding front over the last few weeks, so I’ve been focusing on targeting rare and scarce moths across the UK. With plenty of sites lined up over the next few months before autumn migration thankfully kicks back in, there’s no shortage of night work ahead.
My good friend Alan Lewis has been feeding me some excellent moth sites, and this evening I headed to the Wye Valley near Chepstow.
The target species was the Scarce Hook-tip (Sabra harpagula), a nationally rare moth in the UK, typically associated with mature deciduous woodland.
Jenna’s son Harley decided he wanted to join me on this little adventure, so we left sunny Cheshire at 5pm and headed south-west. We arrived on site and set up three LED light traps, not realising just how busy the night was going to be.
From the off, it was constant action. By midnight, my right-hand man had curled up in the van fast asleep, leaving me to work through the night solo.
It was an excellent night for moths throughout, and at around 1:45am two Scarce Hook-tips finally appeared on the white sheet, with one settling directly on the trap. I managed to get both, absolutely stunning moths and a real target species achieved.
By sunrise I had added six new macro moths to my life list, along with a superb micro moth, the Gold Base Tubic.
Photos of the new species are shown below:
