Non-Stop Birding: One thousand moths in one night

Friday, 10 July 2026

One thousand moths in one night

I was up at 430am and woke to scenes of carnage on the garden office porch. There had clearly been an arrival of a swarm of Yponomeuta sp. I counted at least 450 on the garden office not including any in the traps. I had three traps out again, there were approx 150 moths in the twin-actinic, 200 in the MV and another 100 or so in the Lepiled with another 50 to 100 or so individuals scattered around- that's about 1000 moths. I logged 142 species, so not the highest in one night but certainly the highest number of individuals. To add to the surreality of the scene, Bart appeared at about 445am with the veg box, I was surprised to see any living soul up and about, so he had a look at the insect swarm covering the garden office too, wished me good luck counting that lot and was on his way.

Spent the rest of the day sadly doing admin and also getting the finishing touches done to the next two Dutch Birding papers we are currently working on- one about the Paddyfield Pipit we found in Oman and the other paper a 20 year review of Corvo. Seems a bit of a waste of the weather being indoors but when I have popped out to have a quick look round the garden it seems too hot for most things and not much buzzing around and hardly any birds. Also sent the new copy of Thee Bryans book in for review on apple publishing. So at least been productive.

A couple of smart Mochas were firsts for the year. Now on 426 for the garden year.

Most of the Yponomeuta had grey in the tornal region and dorsal area suggesting they were Willow Ermines (above) or were more plain suggesting a second species (below) but I logged them all as Yponomeuta sp. Update. Just noticed on the Portland blog that they had 550 Willow Ermine a couple of nights ago which ties in with round here. Also here I had about 35 Small Mottled Willow, 5 Silver-Y, a Rusty-dot and a few Rush Veneers.