Early UK butterflies

[Chris Raper]

On Sun, 4 May 1997 15:35:30 -0400, Andrew Wood
<AndrewGWood at COMPUSERVE.COM> wrote:

[snip]

>Moths, too, continue to appear early e.g. Heart and Dart  (Agrotis
>exclamationis)(1 May), Eyed Hawk Moth (Smerinthus ocellata)(24 Apr),
>Setacous Hebrew Character (Xestia c-nigrum)( 2 May), Pale Oak beauty
>(Serraca punctinalis(3 May), Lime Hawk Moth (Mimas tiliae)(1 May), Cinnabar
>(3 May) (Tyria jacobaeae).

Hi Andrew,

Same here - I haven't had any hawks on Hartslock SSSI in south Oxon
but H&D, SHC, Cinnabar, Light Feathered Rustic (Agrotis cinerea),
Treble-bar (Aplocera plagiata), Treble-lines (Charanyca trigrammica),
Common Swift (Hepialus lupulinus) and Scoparia pyralella are all on
the go.

At the British Ent.Soc. meeting at Warburg (outside Henley) on
Saturday there was an amazing mixture of species: Lime Hawk, Poplar
Hawk(L.populi), Pine Hawk(H.pinastri) & Brown Rustic(Rusina
ferruginea) were all early while a _really_ late Chestnut (Conistra
vaccinii) also put in an appearance. In all they got about 82 species
of macro / easy micro and plenty of the nastier micros were taken away
for identification later. A number of Adelids came to the light and
Torticoid moths were in abundance but Pyralids were still a bit
lacking. The only ones I saw were Pyrausta purpuralis & aurata and
Crambus lathoniellus.

Cheers
Chris R.