Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Sunday 29 November 2009

Garden Moth Stats 2009

I've been ridiculously busy at work over the last couple of weeks, including both Saturdays, and otherwise it's been either dark or shitty weather. Consequently nothing ventured and nothing seen! Today I could have got out, but a very welcome late lie-in and generally doing nothing much seemed preferable. One thing I did do was mess about with my garden moth records on MapMate. Aside from a few Winter Moths, I'm unlikely to record anything else here this year so I did some provisional basic analysis. You'll need to click on the tables to be able to read them! 2009 Total as at 29/11/2009 is 9763 individuals/344 species, versus 9764 individuals/343 species in 2008. I kid you not - I couldn't have contrived a closer comparison. There were 68 species recorded in 2008 that I have not seen here in 2009. Of these, the 25 'commonest' with 10 or more records over the years are: In 2009, I have added 13 species (9 micros, 4 macros) to the garden list: Comparison of the top 20 macros and micros to last year shows a few gainers and losers. For the macros, the biggest positive change was for Gold Spot - 29 records/117 individuals versus 10 records/19 individuals in 2008. The biggest drop was for Green Carpet - 31 records/64 individuals versus 41 records/139 individuals in 2008. For the micros, the biggest positive change was for Crambus pascuella - 20 records/60 individuals versus 7 records/8 individuals in 2008. The biggest drop was for Epinotia nisella - 17 records/30 individuals versus 27 records/116 individuals in 2008. So - what does this all mean? Actually - nothing. Comparison of any year to the previous one always shows changes one way or another. I now have ten years of garden trapping data though so I will be doing some proper analysis of certain species at some point during the winter.

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