Saturday July 21

I've just finished the identification process in relation to the moths caught on Thursday night. The total score was 158 moths of 47 species, many of them new to me. The total was bumped up by the bodies of 72 Water Veneers found with a similar number of small Water Boatmen in the bottom of the trap. I don't know why these tiny moths and the other insects seem unable to survive the experience. I can only assume that they need to be close to or in water to remain alive.

The remainder of the catch was hale and hearty, and I spent a pleasant couple of hours sorting through them. One of the commoner moths in the trap are a micro called Bird-cherry Ermine. These are little white moths covered in tiny black dots. However, there are several other species of Yponomeuta species, all of which have fewer dots, and all of which can only be identified with reference to their genitals. I had been looking out for them, and caught at least one.

As an unexpected post-script I have received news from JS that the moth can be identified as Orchard Ermine Yponomeuta padella.

Orchard Ermine Yponomeuta padella

Fortunately most of the moths were macros, and so theoretically easier to identify. The only one to appear in the bathroom had been a Yellow-tail. I released it first and watched as it spiralled high into the air until lost from view. I hadn't expected it to do that.

The only pug of the morning, a Double-striped Pug, had chosen to rest on the garden chair I wished to sit on. I shooed it off and got down to business. Clinging to the side of the trap was a large fat bodied moth of the type I suspect people mean when they say they hate moths. It was a Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing and was the first of two to turn up.

Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing

A beautiful Black Arches was resting on the side of the trap, while I could see several Thorn moths in the trap. These turned out to comprise three species; two were Dusky Thorns, but the other two were new ones. A Purple Thorn and a Canary-shouldered Thorn, the latter a particularly attractive species.

Purple Thorn

Canary-shouldered Thorn

The last moth before I started going through the egg boxes an interesting looking one. I ruled out Sycamore and Knot Grass on size, and concluded it was my first Poplar Grey.

Poplar Grey

One of the first egg boxes contained arguably the best looking moth of the morning, an Iron Prominent. Certainly the first for the garden, but I think I may have been shown one at a moth-trapping event once.

Iron Prominent

I decided to pot it so that Lyn could see it when she got up. Unfortunately this did mean that my only shot of it was from above looking into the pot, and it didn't resume its distinctive resting position.

Another candidate for moth of the day was Ruby Tiger, my first tiger moth for the garden. I actually found three in the trap by the end of the morning.

Ruby Tiger

A moth which I am familiar with from bathroom captures in previous years was Common Rustic ag. This annoying species manages to combine being highly variable, common, and impossible to split without reference to its genitals, hence the abbreviation ag (which I assume means aggregate) after its name. To show its variability I am showing the one I caught in the trap (which bore a similarity to a species called Double Lobed) and a darker one I caught in the bathroom last night.

Common Rustic ag

Common Rustic ag

Continuing with the theme of tricky macro moths, I caught another one which can't be safely identified from a photograph, Marbled Minor ag, and a similar species which I was tempted to identify, Cloaked Minor.

Marbled Minor ag

Cloaked Minor

Once again the problem is the extreme variation shown in the appearance of the Marbled Minor group. However, Cloaked Minor is distinctly more slender at the pointy end than the others. I am pleased to say that JS has concurred with all of the macro identifications I sent him.

Another moth which caused me difficulty, but shouldn't have, was a fairly distinctive looking moth in one of the egg boxes. I casually noted it as "Wave sp" in my notebook and photographed it for later identification. The macro moths are split into several groups in the same way that birds might be waders or warblers. The two largest groups are the geometers (the ones that flatten themselves out at rest with wings outstretched), and the noctuids (the ones with wings like cloaks which scuttle about and flutter a lot). My error came when I decided it was clearly a member of the former group. After going through page after page of geometers I couldn't find its likeness. A quick flip through the rest of the book also came up with nothing, so I emailed a picture to John. He quickly responded "try looking at Oak Hook-tip". And there it was, nestling among a small group of other Hook-tips in a different section to the geometers. A very easy to identify moth !

Oak Hook-tip

This is why you need a phone-a -friend option.

One last macro year-tick was a Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing. I can't help thinking that whoever invented the English moth names was deliberately trying to confuse inexperienced moth-ers like me.

Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing

I have largely ignored micros so far, but you shouldn't overlook the little blighters which typically perch on the perspex sheets or on the edges of the box, and I have to try to identify them. Most were ones I had seen before, and as I haven't heard back from JS yet some of these identifications could change. I think I have got them right though.

Acleris forsskaleana

Agriphila straminella

Clepsis consimilana

Cydia splendana

Hedya salicella

Zeiraphera isertana

Regarding the above I will only add that I caught seven Agriphila straminella and I know them to be a very common grass moth which emerges at about this time. They also look very similar to several other Crambidae moths, so JS may tell me they are something else. The rest are all from the enormous group Tortricidae which contains over 300 species. Fortunately most can be identified, and I am fairly hopeful for the ones shown.

I did photograph a very tiny moth which I think is from the group Elachistidae, and although it might be Elachista canapannella I am expecting to be told it is unidentifiable to species level on the basis of my photograph.

Elachista sp

Finally, I was sitting in the living room last night when I noticed a tiny white moth on my foot.  It was leaping about all over the place, but I finally caught it and observed it had a little yellow head and was probably a Common Clothes Moth Tineola bisselliella. I popped it in the fridge expecting it to calm down, but an hour later it was still too lively to photograph so I let it go...outside.