Garden Moth and mini-zoo update

With sub-zero night temperatures I haven't bothered putting a light on recently but before this cold spell the moth year list had got to three- Winter Moth, Pale Brindled Beauty and Early Moth. What with December moth, Chestnut, Light Brown Apple Moth and Common Quaker from the last couple of weeks in December the garden moth list is now on 7. Will be interesting what the mothing is like in this garden but I've got my eye more on the woodland habitat a few tens of meters along Cuttlebrook that I'm hoping I can get some lights on when the moth season starts. 

So without the moth interest Jacob and I have been working on the mini-zoo which we had to translocate from the Old Vic into the temporary rental which involved quite a bit of decommissioning (the Paludarium, the Reef tank and the Chickens were fully or partly decommissioned). We managed to re-house 22 Convict Cichlids with Sirens Cove (about £200 worth of fish that we bred), the Chickens went to Isaac's child minder, Izzy the Spaniel went with James and Vicky and a few bits came to end of their natural life expectancy but we did loose some fish and corals to stress and predation (during the move and when we mixed species together). So we are down to just 57 species of pets which is almost half of our target species collection. We can't do anything too ambitious until we get into our new homestead but we have added a few little bits including a gorgeous Mexican Red Knee Tarantula and a Tropical Orchid into the Chameleon enclosure. 

Pale Brindled Beauty 

Early Moth 

Mexican Red Knee Tarantula- a bit more showy than our Asian Fawn Tarantula (which oddly showed best ever today and seems to have repositioned itself under a bark hide instead of burrowed deep out of sight - image below) 

The albino Sharp-ribbed Newt with one of the Common Frogs