We had a small gathering of the Ceredigion Moth Group on Saturday. We met up at the Visitor Centre in Ynyslas Dunes and went through the contents of my trap and a trap that Mike brought along. It’s good to see the contents of other peoples traps as it is surprising how different the collection of moths can be, although there weren’t that many in Mikes trap.<\/p>\n
My trap had quite few in it (full list here<\/a> – complete with photos). It had over 70 moths in total from 33 different species, 10 of which were new to me. Everyone seemed quite impressed with my catch and with the moth trap<\/a> itself.<\/p>\n After that we headed off for a walk on Cors Fochno where we saw hundreds of damsel flies and dragon flies, plenty of day flying moths and butterflies and all sort of other invertebrates. We also saw some rare orchids and had a great day out in the sun ‘geeking out’ on the nature around us!<\/p>\n Mike also brought along some pheromone lures which are specially concocted to attract certain species of Clearwing moths. He placed the White-barred Clearwing pheromone lure in a birch tree and left it and hung the Red-tipped Clearwing pheromone lure in some willow where we stood and watched. Much to everyones surprise, within minutes it had worked and there was a Red-tipped Clearwing flying around it. In the excitement we didn’t get a photo and it only hung around for a few seconds, but it was enough to see what it was and get a positive ID. Not bad seeing as the first record of the Red-tipped Clearwing was recorded on the bog by Kevin just a few days before.<\/p>\n\n\t\t