Beddington Farmlands TDB (Too difficult box)

A few moths from June and July that I just couldn't work out so I sent them over to Surrey moth jedi Billy Dykes. Thanks Billy! 

257 moth species at Beddington so far this year. 285 is the site year record so hoping to beat that this year with a full year of MV trapping (although only 4-5 nights a week on average). As I'm only trapping from the window this must be a relatively small sample. The all time site list is 603, as of end of 2019. Probably had less than 10 new species for site this year. There's approximately 2500 species of moth in the UK so just really getting started and plenty of scope to expand the effort with getting more traps and ground level traps across the different habitats across the site.  

Interesting to compare Beddington with my other trapping site at the Old Vicarage. There I've had 236 species (but only 2-3 nights a week on average).  The all time list there is 367. 

Across both sites I've recorded 355 species this year so clearly a lot of difference in species composition across both sites. What with some casual recording at other places too (day trips etc) I've probably recorded 400 species of moth and butterflies this year. 

While on the numbers game a quick diversion: 

This was an interesting table (below) posted by Ali Shuttleworth on the Pan-species listing facebook page. The bottom row is the total number of species on the UK list and the other rows are the number of recorders who have reached different mile stones of those totals.  I've restricted my efforts now to recording  'all things that predominantly fly- but not flies and a few other bits' so Birds, Moths and Butterflies, Dragonflies and then Reptiles & Amphibians and Mammals and a complete amateur meddling into Botany. I'm attempting to focus that onto 'my sites' (Beddington Farmlands, The Azores, Bulgaria and our Garden at the Old Vic) and then feed that into conservation and habitat management. Thrown on top is a bit of 'wild card' exploring and trips to focus on WP and world bird listing and rare bird finding (while absorbing other groups of species as by-product). Life used to be much simpler when I was growing up on my local patch and just trying to find and list the birds there!

As far as any one human naturalist life goes, natural history is infinite (not just species identification and recording but everything else e.g. behaviour, migration, conservation etc etc and then there's all the diverse tools, software and methodology involved that requires mastering and then the commercialisation (tours and reserve facilities etc) and academic social structuring (research centres etc) and the politics behind it all are completely different boxes of chocolates again)   so we all have to scribble some lines and throw nets over bits of it and study that- tiny little bits of it and then feed that into the journals, books , reports, museums and the internet to record the results of the collective scientific odyssey. It's literally dazzling and mind-blowing! There's a fine line to staring into the ecological cosmos with either despair or amazement and it being exhausting or endlessly inspiring. I don't know about others but I'm thrown between exhaustion and cosmic endless inspiration on a daily basis! :-)  ....and like for many people who start this adventure, it all started with Birds, that tiny group of species (only 620 species on the UK list)- the original and still the best. 

Now back to my TDB: 

Dark morph of Knapweed Conch, Agapeta zoegana. 

 Awaiting confirmation (an odd Freyer's Pug?). Plain Pug- thanks Edward. 

Chalk Knot-horn/ Small Clouded Knot-horn)  Phycitodes maritima/saxicola 

 Hawthorn Midget, Phyllonorycter corylifoliella 

 Gelechid sp 

 Cock's-head Bell, Zeiraphera isertana (should have know this one but couldn't see the dorsal triangle that I usually associate it with) 

 Common Cloaked Shoot , Gypsonoma dealbana (above and below) .