Sunday 2 June 2013

A very mixed bag!

Oh to be in England .............

It has certainly been a mixed bag of weather and mothing has been equally mixed. However there is lots to report in spite of the trap being fairly empty. How come I hear you say? Well because if they won't come to you, you have to go and look for them.

And so, those that came to me included some firsts for me here, especially pleasing being the Buff-tip moth, which mimics a bit of broken twig. Here are 2 pictures, an unusual one of its head - but note the detail.

Buff-tip



Buff-tip (head on view)





















Equally pleasing was a fine example of a Scalloped Hazel. Its caterpillar feeds on dozens of different plants but I guess they found it on Hazel in the days when the names were decided.

Scalloped hazel















Another new moth for the site, also a geometrid was the pretty Clouded Border...

Clouded Border

...and there was also a Lunar Marbled Brown, one of the Notodontidae family.

Lunar Marbled Brown

On the micro-moth front, there are literally thousands of the "longhorn" moth Adela reaumurella about and you can see them 'dancing' round the bushes in the sunlight. A trip to Soudley in the sunshine on Friday led to the capture of another longhorn, with possibly the longest antenna as well as the longest name - Nematopogon swammerdamella. Also caught was an Incurvaria masculella.

Nematopogon swammerdemella
Incurvaria masculella



















On the home front, the Lime Hawkmoth, Pale Tussock and Peppered Moth caterpillars/pupae hatched out this week. All of these have featured previously on the blog.

Peppered Moth
And lastly, a Cydia ulicetana hatched from some gorse pods taken on the Mynd several weeks ago.

Cydia ulicetana

No comments:

Post a Comment