Saturday 6 August 2016

Gypsy Moth

I caught a Gypsy Moth last night which I was quite surprised to get but I don't know how unusual this is now.





Andy Newbold, Sibford Ferris, Oxon.

3 comments:

  1. I think that would be an excellent record for Oxfordshire, Andy. There are still resident populations of this moth across London and in Aylesbury which, despite attempts at annihilation by the Forestry folk, seem to be surviving quite well without causing the destruction of trees for which they have been blamed elsewhere in Europe.

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  2. Thank you. I thought that might be the case but I find it difficult to access reliable up-to-date data on abundance and distribution of species.

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  3. I know what you mean. BC did produce a 'Provisional Atlas of the UK's Larger Moths' (ISBN 978-0-9562216-4-3) which was correct to July 2010 using records then in the NMRS database, but that is simply a book full of maps with no accompanying text and many, many more records have been added to the database since then. All the same, it is incredibly useful and well worth having on your bookshelf. It is out of print but a quick Google search suggests that there may still be the odd copy available here and there. In about two years BC hope to have a 'proper' macro-moth atlas available using NMRS data up to the end of this year so that'll give us all a much clearer idea of what is found where. At the county level, of our three vice-counties only vc22 Berkshire has ever produced a local atlas (by Brian Baker, in 1994) and that is now well out-of-date.

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