23 A rare Lacewing and a record night for Moths Steve Goddard On the night of 1 August 2013 my moth trap here at my home in Martlesham Heath was running to take advantage of the warm weather created by a southerly airflow extending from the Mediterranean. The minimum temperature this night was 17°C with little wind giving ideal conditions. Having set up, I next visited the trap, a 125W MV Robinson Moth Trap, at 6.30 am on Friday morning. I found it loaded with moths and many more were on the house and adjacent shed walls. It turned out to be a night that produced the largest number of species identified since my arrival at this location in September 2001. About an hour later I had completed my preliminary inspection of the site, removed the lamp, trap collar and placed a flat square of clear plastic over the resulting gap to prevent moth escapes. Very soon a few moths were attracted to this plastic surface and amongst them, a strikingly large lacewing. As luck would have it, a couple of the more regular green lacewings Chrysoperla carnea, were sitting adjacent for comparison. Fortunately, I always have my digital compact camera handy and was able to obtain the image in Plate 11. I was unable to identify the insect immediately and it was put to one side and lay overlooked in my picture gallery until December when I made contact with Adrian Knowles, whereupon we realised that it was a species of Nothochrysa. The bright orange head suggested that this was in fact Nothochrysa fulviceps but this is an extremely rare insect in Britain and so the image was e-mailed to the National Recorder, Colin Plant, for his opinion. Armed with only the photograph, Colin noted that it would have been better if he had been able to see the character of the tarsal claw on the insect itself, but given the overall appearance and an individual wing length of over 20 mm, this could only be confirmed as N. fulviceps. Nothochrysa fulviceps appears to be a rare insect in Britain, although it is common in Europe. Its association with mature oak canopies may restrict observations. Plant (1994) noted that there had been no reports in the British Isles after 1958. Since then, it has been recorded in Cumberland (VC 70, 1995) and in South Northumberland (VC 67, 2000). The national database records a total of 15 British Isles records, all from England (Colin Plant, personal communication, March 2014). The origin of the 2013 insect is unclear. Martlesham Heath, as many readers will know, is a village on the east side of Ipswich. The area is located approximately three miles from the River Deben to the east, four miles from the River Orwell to the south and eight miles from the North Sea (Garden OS Grid Reference TM237446; Vice-County 25 – East Suffolk). Much of the surrounding land is occupied by a nationally important area of lowland heath most of which is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Interestingly however, although there had been no recognised immigrant moths in the trap, there were a likely thirteen species (see below) that had wandered from local wetlands or maybe from the coast, indicating a night of
Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 50 (2014)