Mothing in Kent 2025

Mrs Sciencebase and I had a lovely week in a small holiday house situated on The Strand in Walmer, just south of Deal on the East Coast of Kent. Arrived to find runners piling in from an ultra marathon and a half marathon, with live music to entertain. We imbibed a few Lighthouse Lagers and dined on local fish and chips, as you do when beside the seaside.

 

I was half hoping to see some migrant Lepidoptera so set up a Heath trap with a synergetic UV tube in the house’s tiny courtyard garden. I got a nice range of moths 250+ specimens of around 63 species over the course of the week. Several of them were new for me (NFM*), but there were no particularly unusual species. A couple of geometer-type moths made their escape before being I counted or identified.

The daily tallies were as follows:

Sat – 34 moths of 19 species
Sun – 52 of 24 (16 Celsius, warmest night)
Mon – 37 of 19
Tue – 26 of 18 (Synergetic+LepiLED)
Wed – 36 of 23
Thu – 37 of 16
Fri – 35 of 17

If I discount C. culmella and Yponomeuta sp. from my records and count their nightly appearances as each just 1 moth of 1 species, the numbers are less skewed by those outliers which often appeared in double figures. So a couple of dozen moths of twenty or so species each night. Single appearances from a few of them like Privet Hawk-moth and Small Magpie, but many of them appeared most lighting-up sessions.

Sat – 22 of 19
Sun – 28 of 24
Mon – 29 of 19
Tue – 22 of 18
Wed – 30 of 23
Thu – 24 of 16
Fri – 22 of 17

We also saw various moths on coast and country walks during the day. A decent haul of species was also to be had at the Gents at St Margaret’s at Cliffe bay on Friday morning:

We saw several mint moths here and there, a Hummingbird Hawk-moth on Red Valerian on our first coast walk. We ticked a new butterfly species at Blean Woods NNR – Heath Fritillary – where there were also innumerable Ringlet, which outnumbered the Meadow Browns 10 to 1. We perhaps also saw a couple of Purple Hairstreak there too.

Searching for the recently re-discovered Dover Tortrix (the Tiree Twist) at Temple Ewell NNR, we saw some micros of unknown ID, Six-spot Burnet on second visit as well as Chalk Hill Blue, but I don’t think we saw the Dover. We also noted, a Ringed China-mark that Mrs Sciencebase spotted. Other butterflies there: Comma, Red Admiral, Marbled White, Meadow Brown, Small Heath, Large and Small Skipper, a very tatty and worn Clouded Yellow, but no Silver-spotted.

I have used iRecord to get my records to the Kent moth county recorders and all have been accepted, but with a query (as I expected) on the Cryptic Fern.