Coming back to some decent moths

I had been thinking about breaking the journey south from Scotland with a night somewhere up north, perhaps taking in a trip to the Farnes en route, but in the end I decided to come straight home on Thursday and get the moth light on.  As we headed south I recorded a temperature increase of 26 degrees (!), though it had cooled down a bit by the time we got home to Norfolk.  It was still far milder than it had been in Scotland though so I looked forward to seeing some moths in the morning.

In an earlier version of this post I'd said that the best night of the moth was Dark Elm Case-bearer Coleophora limosipennella.  It had keyed out as such and the genitalia ruled out two of the most similar species.  However I made a bit of a mess of the dissection and reached this ID based on one feature that ruled out the two closest species, but I failed to consider another, more common, species that can also look quite similar.  A few days later I became uneasy about my ID and thought to check whether it could have been  Buff Rush Case-bearer Coleophora caespititiella.  Turns out this shares the feature I'd used to identify it as limosipennella.  I thought I'd accidentally destroyed one part of the genitalia that would have helped with the ID, but checking my photos against caespititiella I realised that I hadn't - it's supposed to look like that on caespititiella.  So Buff Rush Case-bearer Coleophora caespititiella it was - not as unusual and not new for me, but at least I sorted it out before etching a stringy record into the archives.

Buff Rush Case-bearer Coleophora caespititiella, North Elmham, 4th June

Better looking was new-for-the-year Beautiful Golden Y.

Beautiful Golden Y, North Elmham, 4th June

Also new for the year were Plum Tortrix Hedya pruniana, Small Magpie Anania hortulata, 2 Common Marbled Carpets, 6 Buff Ermines and Brown Rustic.

Plum Tortrix Hedya pruniana, North Elmham, 4th June

Buff Ermine, North Elmham, 4th June

Brown Rustic, North Elmham, 4th June

Common Marbled Carpet, North Elmham, 4th June

Small Magpie Anania hortulata, North Elmham, 4th June

The more routine stuff consisted of Common Grey Scoparia ambigualis, 2 Silver-ground Carpets, 2 Green Carpets, Brimstone Moth, Poplar Hawkmoth, 2 Pale Tussocks, 6 White Ermines, 3 Cinnabars, 3 Small Square-spots, Lychnis and 7 Treble Lines. 
 

Lychnis, North Elmham, 4th June

Common Grey Scoparia ambigualis, North Elmham, 4th June