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The numbers remain low with 5 moths of 4 species last night. I photographed another Pearly Underwing (Peridroma saucia) as this has a slightly different colouring to the previous specimens I've had in the bait trap. I also took some new Dot-and-Dash Swordgrass (Xylena curvimacula) photographs. I'm staying in the Waterton area for the next few days. It will be interesting to see if the moth numbers are much different to my backyard.
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There were just 7 moths of 5 species yesterday and nothing new for the year. Due to rain I didn't put the light trap out last night but was quite surprised to find 9 moths of 4 species in the bait trap this morning which included:
4x White Specs (Mythimna unipuncta) 1x Garden Cutworm (Fishia discors) 2x Bicolored Sallows (Sunira bicolorago) 1x Dot-and-Dash Swordgrass (Xylena curvimacula) <no title>
There have been no new species for the last 2 days. In fact, of the 22 macro and micro moths in the traps 10 were Garden Cutworm Moths (Fishia discors) and in spite of another warm night there were only 2 macro moths in the traps last night. Hoping for more tonight. As there are no new backyard moth photographs I thought I'd add a moth photograph that I took in Ecuador last year using a flash. I wish I'd had more time for moth photography. There were certainly some fantastic moths around the lights in the evening...
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There were just 7 moths of 6 species in the traps on Friday and nothing new for the year. However, last night was the best night for some time with 16 moths of 10 species and 3 new backyard species for the year. The new species were Battered Sallow (Sunira verberata), Pallid Rustic (Hydraecia pallescens) and Juniper Carpet (Thera juniperata).
This brings my 2012 total for backyard macro moths to 197 and my all time total to 250. I've already seen or identified 54 more species than in 2011... Perhaps 200 macro moths for this year is now looking like a possibility? Certainly this has been an excellent year for a backyard moth'er...
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The moth numbers have continued to be low with 9 moths of 7 species on the 18th, 11 of 6 on the 19th and 9 of 6 last night. There were no new moths with one notable exception. Yesterday, there was a new Lymantriidae, Douglas Fir Tussock Moth (Orgyia pseudotsugata) on the wall behind the light trap. This appears to be the first record of a Douglas Fir Tussock Moth for Alberta. Apparently, this is not an entirely unexpected record as it was thought that it might occur in the western mountain region of Alberta in association with its host, Douglas-fir, especially during outbreak years. So far this is just a one off record but I will deploying my backyard light traps with interest over the next few weeks.
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