First Moth of the year

It is always nice to see the first Moth of the year nestled amongst the egg boxes in the garden moth trap. In this case it was a Hebrew Character Orthosia gothica captured during the night of the 18th February.

The flight season for this moth is listed as March-early May for southern Britain. Therefore this one was certainly quite early, although I once caught one on the 26th January in 2008!

Month by month totals for this moth are as follows:
Jan = 1.
Feb = 2.
Mar = 23.
Apr = 25.
May = 0.

I might have to wait sometime for the next species to show up as we are now in a spell of very cold weather, labelled the Beast From The East.