:: Wild Places Blog ::

After some fairly poor catches at the end of May when the winds were northerly and pretty cool things have finally warmed up and catches in the trap have been good for the last week. With having a small garden we don’t trap every night as we don’t want to interfere too much with the moths feeding and mating. The trap is usually out, weather permitting, 3 nights a week with at least 1 night between sessions.

It never ceases to amaze me that there is always something new in the trap!

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, it has been so fascinating so see what turns up.

Silver Y (Autographa gamma) a migrant moth which doesn't over-winter

Blood-vein (Timandra comai)

The night of 6th June was mild, with a low of 10′C and the total catch was 72 moths of 33 species - the highlights being 2 species of hawk-moth - just fantastic!

Poplar hawk-moth (Laothoe populi). What a fantastic moth eh?!

Pine Hawk-moth (Hyloicus pinastri)

I think one of the things that has fascinated us the most about some of the moths is their amazing camoflague. Going through the trap one morning i said “who put that piece of stick in there?”. It turned out to be a Pale Prominent, which does look just like a piece of rotting wood.

Pale Prominent (Pterostoma palpina) - how's that for bizarre!

Today we found this moth hanging underneath the low wall around the patio, again it looked like a random piece of broken stick - the Buff-tip

Buff-tip (Phalera bucephala)

Some moths are just plain beautiful, take a look at this White Ermine - not much in the way of camoflague there is there!

White Ermine (Spilosoma lubricipeda)

and this Light Emerald

Light Emerald (Campaea margaritata)

Hook-tips get their name from the shape of their wings, we’ve caught 2 species so far:-

Pebble Hook-tip (Drepana falcataria)

and

Beautiful Hook-tip (Laspeyria flexula)

Some of the micro moths are also colourful

Eurrhypara hortulata (Small Magpie)

and the Bee Moth

Aphomia sociella (Bee Moth). Sexually dimorphic, this is the female

Aphomia sociella (Bee Moth), male

All the moths we have caught so far have been listed as common or locally common with just the one migrant (the Silver Y) but having only just started mothing this year they have all been new to us. Our best session was in Shropshire where we had over 200 moths in and around the trap of 46 species - we sat from 5am until 11am - 6 hours identifying the many moths that were new to us - we also had a lot of pugs which we didn’t have the time or skill to identify and of course there were also quite a few micros which we had to let go without identifying. Now my parents are firmly under the impression that i’ve gone completely bonkers I tell them it’s my age

Just gone 5am and Ian getting stuck in to the id challenges