Wednesday 4 July 2018

Cloaked Pug trapped in Blackwood - new for VC35

On the morning of Friday 29th June I was going through my very full traps when I noticed a very interesting looking Geometrid in one of the egg boxes. My first impression was that it was barred/mottled Carpet of some sort or a Small Engrailed so I potted it immediately and popped it in the fridge until I had completed emptying the trap.
On getting the moth out of the fridge some head-scratching started as I couldn't find anything similar in the Waring or Manley Guides. Until by chance I started looking at the pages for Pugs, and noticed that my Geometrid had a striking resemblance to a Cloaked Pug - but it was a very large specimen for a Pug (25-30mm wingspan), but Cloaked Pug is that large, but it was way out of it's normal range if it was right.
So I got some photographs of it and sent an email to Martin Anthony and even had him wondering about it since he didn't have a lot of experience with this species, and then yesterday he confirmed, after researching and consulting others that it was indeed a Cloaked Pug - the first one for Gwent, and probably the most unexpected moth that I have trapped to date.



1 comment:

  1. Well done Kevin - a great (big) catch! There was one in Ceredigion a few nights ago too.

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.