2024 Moth Highlights

December always feels to me like a surplus month. Bird and moth-wise it's basically all over by the end of November, but...well...here's another 31 days just in case. And judging by recent Bluesky 'Moth Highlights of 2024' type posts, it's not just me who feels that way. Yes, there might be some decent birding yet to come this year, but my heart isn't really in it. I'm not exactly sure why I feel this way, but it may well be an age thing. In recent years I have noticed that the end of autumn is accompanied by an increasingly desperate longing for next spring! Anyway, here is the NQS 'Moth Highlights of 2024' type post...

As I knew would be the case, garden mothing in 2024 was pursued far less zealously than during the preceding 18 months or so. I didn't count catches, or note down very much at all, but did try to keep track of species new for the garden. So I am fairly confident that the garden tally (including aggregates) is now 553, of which 304 are macro-moths. I did take quite a few moth pics, so here is a fairly random selection of what I feel are the year's highlights...

Clockwise from top left: Beautiful Snout, December Moth (male and female), Frosted Orange, Herald.

The Beautiful Snout was actually trapped in our son's garden in Lyme Regis, but is such a stunner that it automatically earned itself a place here.

Clockwise from top left: Olive-tree Pearl Palpita vitrealis, Small Mottled Willow, Dark Sword-grass, Portland Ribbon Wave.

Nominally these are all migrants, though our Portland Ribbon Waves are quite likely Dorset bred. Olive-tree Pearl and Small Mottled Willow have occurred just once prior to this year, so three and two respectively was a nice result.

Clockwise from top left: Large Ranunculus, Banded Sable Spoladea recurvalis, Scarce Bordered Straw, Mottled Umber.

Large Ranunculus and Mottled Umber were both new for the garden. Scarce Bordered Straw is another migrant that has occurred just once previously, and we caught two this year. Spoladea recurvalis is easily the rarest migrant moth of the year, but was encountered at Cogden while birding. Typical.

Clockwise from top left: Grey Shoulder-knot, Cloaked Carpet, Least Black Arches, Oak Marble Eudemis profundana.

All the above were garden firsts except Cloaked Carpet, which has occurred once before.

Clockwise from top left: Galium Carpet, Lesser Wax Moth Achroia grisella, Garden Tiger, Black-streaked Tortrix Epinotia signatana.

All the above were garden firsts. As is often the case, the two micros are probably the scarcest of that lot, but Garden Tiger is nowadays on the Red List and has Near Threatened status. Certainly it's the first I've seen for donkey's years.

Clockwise from top left: Ghost Moth, Clover Stilt Parectopa ononidis, Ilex Leaf-miner Phyllonorycter messaniella, Red Underwing.

Apart from the Red Underwing - our second - all the above are new for the garden. The Clover Stilt was one of the highlights of a couple of very warm nights' mothing back in the summer. It is also possibly the scarcest moth trapped in 2024, and I think my personal favourite of the year.

So that's it for moths. The trap is now in...er...moth balls.

Zoom F1 Field Recorder

An afternoon walk to West Bay and back seemed like a fine way to check out my new Zoom F1 Field Recorder. I've set the record level to max now (Hi++) so was keen to see how it performed...

This is my on-the-go recording set-up.

My camera bag strap goes across the body and over my left shoulder, so the clippy lavalier mic winds up just behind my left shoulder. A handy thing with these old Crumpler Muffin Top bags is that the strap padding grips your shoulder pretty well, so it tends to stay in place even as you pull the bag back and forth to get at the camera - the webbing simply slides through the padded bit - which means the microphone is generally where it's meant to be. Some birders clip the mic to the peak of their cap, but I don't often wear a cap.

The Zoom F1. My settings: Rec Format 48k 24bit, Lo Cut 160Hz, Limiter OFF, Rec Level Hi++

I made a note of the time I started recording, and headed off.

I am not in the habit of reviewing a whole recording like I would with noc-mig, rather I note the time of any interesting bird sounds and check them out on Audacity later by scrolling to the relevant time slot. So here are a couple from today, exactly as recorded...

First, Grey Wagtail, with trickling river...

And Rock Pipit, complete with surging sea...

Both recordings are comfortably as loud as I would have expected, and detailed enough to get a decent spectrogram out of them. This is the Rock Pipit...

Rock Pipit calls. Unedited. The dense background noise is caused by the sea.

I am confident that the Zoom F1 performed as well as my H4n Pro would have done. So far I've had about seven hours of recording from the 2xAAA batteries in the F1, and the charge indicator is still on two bars. The H4n Pro would have been long dead by now.

I am using my EM272 mono clippy microphone, a quality item which retails at almost 50 quid. The F1 is supplied with a Zoom clippy mic. Is it any good?

Zoom clippy on the left, EM272 right.

I took both mics to the garden cabin and tried a side-by-side test. I positioned each in exactly the same spot - without wind shields of any kind - and played them a bit of half-volume bird song from the Collins Bird Guide app on my phone. Obviously the phone was positioned identically for each mic too. So here are some side-by-side spectrograms from that session...

Garden Warbler - Zoom mic on the left, EM272 mic on the right.

It is easy to see subtle differences, and the EM272 is clearly a bit more sensitive. Listening back, the EM272 recording has a 'fuller' sound as well - it just has an air of quality which the Zoom mic lacks.

Chiffchaff. Again, Zoom left, EM272 right.

Notice those high-frequency bits marked with the yellow arrow which the EM272 picks up but are missed by the Zoom. Again, the sensitivity differences are quite obvious.

In practice, the Zoom mic was fine really. Playing back the recordings and comparing them, yes, you could hear the subtle difference in quality, but to my ear the volume was pretty much identical. And obviously you could tell it was a Garden Warbler and Chiffchaff! Would the Zoom mic successfully have recorded the Grey Wag and Rock Pipit featured above? Definitely!

Incidentally, the horizontal aberrations on those comparison spectrograms never appear on recordings done in the field, and are no doubt a quirk of my phone's speaker or the Bird Guide recordings themselves.

So there we go. Just a quick 'first impressions' type review of the Zoom F1.

Someone on Bluesky asked what I use the recordings for. Good question. I would say that 99.99% of my recorded material is discarded, whether it is from the field or noc-mig. I save the occasional good bits, adding them to my little collection of bird recordings. Of course the main reason I record anything at all is in case a mega happens. My noc-mig recordings of Stone-curlew and Night Heron, for example, are as treasured as any photo.