With -3c in the garden last night I think the mothtrapping year is over now. 2016 has been my best year in terms of the number of species recorded by a fair distance and the first time I've recorded over 300 species in the year. The 318 total included 6 new macro and 16 new micro species for the garden list.  The 2 most obvious factors involved here are probably: 1. Using a 40W actinic trap instead of the 6W model I've used for the past 16 years. 2. The fine weather this summer from mid July until well into September. The table below summarises my moth numbers from 2010 and although not strictly comparable it still reveals somthing interesting. Despite a record number of species the total moths trapped still didn't reach the numbers achieved in the smaller actinic trap in 2010 and 2011.

	2010	2010	2011	2011	2012	2012	2013	2013	2014	2014	2015	2015	2016	2016
	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.	No.	Spec.
Macro Moths	5090	180	4833	187	2972	160	2719	160	2273	164	3515	186	4469	201
Micro Moths	1310	86	1215	96	1348	97	945	96	929	106	1006	108	1494	117
Total	6400	266	6048	283	4320	257	3664	256	3202	270	4521	294	5963	318