New MV

With aplogies to Charly :-)) Just set up my new MV trap from ALS this evening and already had my first moth, a third brood Brimstone. They are minute being around the size of a carpet such as Silver Ground Carpet ! I will try and get a photo with measurements up on the blog tomorrow.

Nice one Charly, Jon tells me your Microscope is on its way to you. I emailed you myself yesterday, did you get this ?

Beechwood Park

6 Speckled Wood
1 Red Admiral
! Large White
2 Small Copper

Last nights moths

Common Marbled carpet 7
red Green Carpet 1
Garden carpet 1
Silver Y 1
Autumunal Rustic 1
Rosy rustic 2
Lunar Underwing 1
Sq Sp Rustic 1
Small sq Spot 1
Large Y underwing 6
Lesser Yellow Undwg 10
Light Brown apple Moth 4
white shouldered House Moth 1
Acleris laterna/comariana 2
Acleris sparasana 1
Blastobasis decolorella 1
Garden Rorse Tortix 1
First time this year ive had more Lessers than large Yellow Underwings and a migrant Silver Y.

Migrants

Its blowing an absolute gale here on the Llyn coast today, gusts of 40/50 miles an hour and forecast to get worse as the remains of Hurricane Hanna hit the west coast of Britain tonight. Not many butterflies around this afternoon but there are hundreds of Silver Y all along the coast I walked this afternoon and a few dozen in my garden on Lavender when I got back at 6pm. Might be well worth running those garden traps for a few nights now just to see if any migrants turn up on the front of the gale. Assuming I and the van are still in one piece in the morning and its not peeing down I will check the coastal fringe to see if any goodies have come in and report back.

A few recent sightings

Ogden Water (early am)
Red Admiral

Sunny Vale, Southowram, Dark Lane
Lots of speckled wood
Meadow browns
Gatekeeper

I know it's not in Calderdale but I went to St Anthony's Primary School in Clayton (Monday), a short visit to their new wildlife area
Small Copper
Peacock
Large White
Red Admiral
Meadow Brown
Speckled Wood

Ringed China Mark

Hi all,has anyone ever recorded Ringed China Mark in Calderdale,Brian Leesey caught one in todmorden on the 17.08.08 At the time I was sure I had recorded it last year at light but looking at my records is was out of our area.?

Vapourer

Vapourer

It's been very quite up here this last week with few Moths, and these are the pick of the bunch



Pink Barred Sallow

Autumnal Rustic

plus five Angle Shades on the Budleia last night, one of my favourite Moths

Books for sale

I have several used copies of some old but very useful lepidoptera books for sale cheap to Calderdale moffers.

Larval Foodplants A Vade Mecum for the Field Lepidopterist by PBM Allan... £12 a copy including postage. I have TWO copies only spare.

The Caterpillars of the British Moths by Stokoe. Part of the Wayside & Woodland Series... these normally go for between £25 and £65 for ONE volume depending on condition. I have TWO sets at £45 a set including P&P.

I will happily hang on for payday if someone is financially embarrassed at the moment. I will be donating any cash raised to The Halifax Bird Club after my P&P expenses have been deducted in my annual donation to the club in January. Hopefully these volumes will go to keen local moffers and not be bought for re-sale on eBay....I will be watching :-))

Speckled Wood

Reading through Richard Lewingtons " Pocket guide to the Butterflies of Great Britain & Ireland" I noticed this about Speckled Wood males. " it has been found that these more sedentary males have tend to have four hindwing spots whereas the males that actively patrol in search of females only have three hindwing spots. Might be worth check back through your photos and seeing if this holds good in Calderdale. The only images I have all show three spots only so are obviously the more randy form :-))

I also found this excellant link,which no doubt I am the last to find, but just incase http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/index.php

A couple from the Outer Hebrides

Just had a week on the Outer Hebrides, no mothing as such as we intended to camp and can't run the Actinic from the car. These two were found in a house bathroom, I think the bottom one is one of the Rustics (Flounced?) and the top one I'm even less sure about, one of the Ears?

For Charly

Charly...can you email me on paul.talbot54@googlemail.com

I have another contact for you for dissection group but do not want his email address on the blog

More Garden dart stuff from Yorkshire Recorder.

These are the records since 2000 for all of yorkshire (all of single moths) in all five VCs:

Year Totals
2000 10
2001 4
2002 2
2004 3
2006 3
2007 2
... and some of these are from inexperienced or unreliable observers so the real totals may be less. In the Harrogate area we have 33 records, but only one since 1998. Most recent ones are from VC63 but it does turn up in other places. Forgive my scepticism with this species, but several ones I've chased up have been Square-spot Rustics.

Anyway, it's great that you have a hot spot in your area, so I shall be much less sceptical about records from the Halifax district!!
C.Fletcher

Nice Website

Worth a quick look for the insect images alone, Pugs might be of interest. Trevor is a nice guy who is very kindly ID'ing some beetles found here on the Llyn for me. His site is at
http://www.eakringbirds.com/

Photos

Hi all
I don't suppose anyone could set up a Yahoo Group for this blog ? The idea behind this is that we could then have a free 100 MB files area for photos and a photo album section. The site does not really need to be used as a "chat" group as most are but would be very useful for building up an ID help via photos for lepidoptera (and other insects in Calderdale). Seems a shame to waste all the excellent photos posted by Charly, Darrell, Brian, etc, which can be difficult to find once off the front page. Just an idea from an expat :-))

A couple more from Brian Leesey

Green Arches a beautiful woodland species recorded at hallwood todmorden(26.07.08.Bl)

Scarce silver y,a moorland species rarely recorded but undoubtedly a resident of our moorland.(22.08.08,todmorden BL)

Ypsolopha sylvella

Another one that might of interest to determine distribution in Calderdale is Ypsolopha sylvella. I started to record this species in my garden MV at Park Rd in the early years of trapping. Ian Kimber very kindly used to confirm (or to be honest named for me !) various species of micro that I trapped. On sending these records to Harry Beaumont the YNU micro recorder he was somewhat sceptical of the ID, saying he throught they were more likely the closely related Y. alpella. Neither Ian nor I was happy about this so I sent some specimens of sylvella to Harry and he was delighted to confirm our original ID. The reason he had been sceptical was that there had been something like 6 or 7 confirmed records from Yorkshire in the last hundred years and I was trapping something like 10-15 a week !

Ian has the flight period down as August to September but my records are mainly from September to late October. It occurs in Oak Woods (larval foodplant is Oak) and should be around now in Calderdale. It would be interesting to see if it occurs more widely through Calderdale and in the numbers I recorded it in. The image is of an adult from my back garden MV taken by Ian.

ANDY COCKROFT

Send me your CUK for Mapmate and I will sync my records that I have so far on MM. Please remember though I have around 3 years yet to put on MM from Calderdale. I will set Sync to just VC63 records, but some of these will be outside Calderdale. You can then add these to any lists you guys pass around.

Hornbeam

Colin has posted a few areas where Hornbeaem can be found - -
428 Carpinus betulus Hornbeam Mixenden Dams SE064282
428 Carpinus betulus Hornbeam Milner Royd Sowerby Bridge SE0723
428 Carpinus betulus Hornbeam Beechwood Park Illingworth SE078263
428 Carpinus betulus Hornbeam Lister Lane Cemetary SE085253
428 Carpinus betulus Hornbeam Shibden Hall Estate SE1025
428 Carpinus betulus Hornbeam Clifton Lanes SE166234
428 Carpinus betulus Hornbeam Milner Royd Sowerby Bridge SE0723
428 Carpinus betulus Hornbeam Scar Wood-Hx SE083234
428 Carpinus betulus Hornbeam Moselden Car park SE046168
So take your pick....
thanks to Colin and the HxSS

Garden Dart - Confirmed

After sending a specimen of Garden Dart to Charlie Fletcher we have now had it confirmed that they are what we thought - this is quite remarkable as there are very few recent records for the whole of Yorkshire, and all of those have been in the extreme south. Over the last 3 years I have had 51 here at Pellon and Brian has had a few last year at Walsden so the challenge is now on to find some more...........

Photos from recent field trips by b.Leesey

Blue bordered carpet Gorpley Clough 25,07.08 (AC,BL)


Scalloped hook tip and latticed heath Withens Clough 28.08.08(AC,BL,MH and nice to see NICK Carter'on his first field trip)

Digital SLR

Hi all
We have a Minolta 400 ( I think its the 400) film SLR with loads of lenses to go with it. I am wanting to buy a Digital SLR but want one I could attach by some method the existing lenses we have for the Minolta. Anyone know of such a camera ?