Wednesday July 4

After another very warm week, the moth trap goes out tonight.

In the meantime I can only report on rather slim pickings since my last post, what with football and that. Even the bathroom failed to live up to expectations.

Nevertheless I did catch three micro-moths. The first was on Monday night and was truly tiny. My attempt to photograph it can best be described as pathetic, but on comparing the blurry image with the pictures in my micro-moths book I thought I might have cracked it.

However, I then checked the Internet and found that the species I had plumped for, Parornix anglicella, cannot be distinguished from the other ten Parornix moths without examination of their genitals, and worse still the photograph on the Internet didn't look much like the painting in the book.

Micro-moth possibly Parornix sp

So not very satisfactory on any level.

Last night two more micros turned up. One appeared to be Crambus pascuella, a common species in the garden. The other was again a very small one. I decided to have another go at photographing them through my hand lens. To my great surprise, although still not up to much as photographs, I was able to reach a positive identification of the little'un as Coptotriche marginea.

Coptotriche marginea

Crambus pascuella

I had hoped to get a shot of the C marginea once I liberated it from the pot, but it somehow disappeared as if into thin air as soon as it left.

I will probably be attempting my new technique as I struggle through whatever tonight brings. There may well be a few day's gap before the next post.