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Suffolk Natural History, Vol. 36
Blossom Underwings (Orthosia miniosa, Denis & Schiff.) in Suffolk in 1999 During the early part of April 1999 this moth was recorded at a few sites around southern Suffolk. The last confirmed Suffolk record of this moth that I am aware of was by Rafe Eley at Nowton in 1948. Morley’s Lepidoptera of Suffolk only mentions four records from the 1800s up to 1936. The first record to arrive was from Richard Stace who recorded two individuals at Lower Holbrook on 3 April 1999. The Suffolk Moth Panel confirmed the identification the following day. A couple of moth light sessions at Little Blakenham Pits on 4 April (Suffolk Moth Group) and at Lower Hollesley Common (Suffolk Moth Group) on 5 April turned up further singletons and meant that a few more people had their first sight of this moth. Jeff Higgott at Rushmere, Ipswich also reported singletons on 6 and 8 April, although a mothing session at the Ipswich Golf Course (near to Jeff’s garden) on the 9 April failed to turn up any records despite having six moth lights out on the course (Suffolk Moth Group). Initially we were a bit puzzled about where all these Blossom Underwing moths had come from. Our first thoughts were that it may have been in the county at very low numbers avoiding detection and had a recent population explosion (which the species is thought to periodically undergo). It was not considered to be resident in Norfolk and had not been recorded in the county since the 1950s. Essex have a resident colony south of Colchester but this seemed a bit far for such numbers of moths to turn up in Suffolk. The moth was not thought to be a migrant so we were left a bit puzzled. However, after talking to other lepidopterists in neighbouring counties I started to hear similar tales of the moth being recorded in Essex, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire around the same period. On further investigation it turned out that the moth had been recorded in other counties mainly along the south coast. A more complete picture appeared in the August 1999 issue of Atropos in an article written by Mark Tunmore. This listed 56 records of the moth from the counties of Cornwall, Essex, Glamorgan, Dorset, East Sussex, Kent, Suffolk, Norfolk and Oxfordshire over the period from 31 March 1999 to 26 April 1999 with most of the records occurring between 1 and 4 of April. Although there was no great migration activity of other moth species during this period there was some. This leads to the probable conclusion that the records for Suffolk were probably of migrant individuals. As this moth has not previously been considered to be a migrant, some at least of the population explosions recorded in the past may actually have been migrant influxes. It will be interesting to see if there are any offspring of the migrants recorded in the county in 2000 and if the species will establish itself here - time will tell. If any one has further records for this moth I would be very grateful to receive them. If they could send the records in with as much detail as possible; precise dates and locations (grid reference and site name) recorded along with the number of individuals seen. It would also be useful to know if a voucher specimen has been retained in case of queries on identification. References
Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 36 (2000)
NOTES ON SOME SUFFOLK MOTHS, 1999
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Morley, C. (1937). Final catalogue of the Lepidoptera of Suffolk. Ipswich: Suffolk Naturalists’ Society Tunmore, M. An influx of Blossom Underwing Orthosia miniosa into the UK. Atropos [8] August 1999. Tony Prichard, 3 Powling Road, Ipswich, IP3 9JR
Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 36 (2000)