Six species. This Chestnut was flying about in the house last night. It took a bit of catching so I couldn't take a better photo in case it got loose again.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I finally found a micro-moth to practice on, albeit a large one. This is a full size photo though at about 1:1.5 scale. I think I've sorted out the white balance problem with the flash now but the lighting is still a bit too dim and unbalanced. You can see the difference in focus on each wing tip though and I'm not sure what's caused that I think it might be a diffraction problem caused by the flash rather than a depth of field difference. Early days though and this is miles better than I could manage with my old lens already.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I forgot this one from the weekend too. I found this beech leaf by the car when we went for a walk in the forest. The s-shaped marking is fairly distinctive due to the shape and position so would probably have been from the leaf-mining caterpillar of the Small Beech Pigmy moth (Stigmella tityrella). Leaf mines aren't as pretty as live moths but interesting and under-recorded apparently.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Our moth facebook groups locally are having a bit of a thing about leaf miners at the moment. I'm on the border between three, Notts moth group, Derbys Moth group and then theres the Leicestershire and Rutland group. Then of course there are the ones who go out hunting for clearwings. I'm still at the stage of finding out what's in my garden without going further afield.
I think it was autumnwatch a while back, why moths are so important. Most people like butterflies, pretty things on buddleja in summer. Moths, many of which are just brown things flitting about in the dark seem pretty unimportant. However there are so many more species of moths, that without the moth larvae, all those pretty birds like blue tits and robins would have no grubs to feed their chicks. So no birds. Without moths later on, bats and insect eating birds would go short.
As gardeners, leaf mining larvae tend be ring alarm bells, spray them out of existence. Maybe we just need to live and let live, accept a few imperfect leaves as being the price we pay to see the pretty birds at the feeders later on.
It must be the best time of year to find some mines. If you look at the leaf above you can see how the break in the cell structure stops the tree reabsorbing the chlorophyll so if you find a big patch of brown leaves the bits of green stick out like a sore thumb.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I saw a nice moth while out walking the dog tonight. I think it was a Dusky Thorn but it would be an odd time of year to see one. It was windy and lashing down with rain and it crash-landed upside down on the road in front of me. I helped it up but it flew onto the back of my leg where I couldn't see it and then off into the night. I'm always amazed how tough they are for such delicate little creatures.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I put it out last week and got precisely one hebrew character. I had a plume moth in the greenhouse and disturbed something else in a pot I didn't identify other than about 1cm, triangle shaped and greyish. This was posted on Derbyshire moth group today, not by me I hasten to add. "A really surprising night with phenomenal numbers trapped at High Leas Farm, near Riber. 2 traps run - a Skinner with 15W actinic with a CFL bulb which obtained 102 moths, and an 80W Robinson under beech trees which got 326 moths!Most were Quakers including Twin-spotted and Powdered but amongst them were Satellite, several Early Tooth-striped, 20+ Water Carpet, Grey Shoulder-knot, Diurnea fagella, Acleris sp., Shoulder-stripe, Early Thorn, Brindled Pug and March Moth.All set against a backdrop of serenading Tawny Owl and Woodcock last night, and Redstart this morning. Absolute heaven!" I don't think I got that many at the height of last years heatwave.
That's reassuring given the dire predictions after the heatwave last year. There are at least 12 pugs around the trap tonight which is more than I normally see in a night. 3 other species too so far.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
28 Double Striped Pugs this morning along with a Brindled Beauty, an Early Tooth Striped, 4 Hebrew Characters, an Early Grey, the Common Plume moth I posted last night and some assorted Little Brown Jobs yet to be identified. Really good results for the time of year for me and I haven't recorded the Common Plume before so that's a new one for my garden list. It looks like people on iNaturalist are also seeing good numbers.
There was some moth trapping content on last night's Wild Isles on the iPlayer too if you didn't catch it.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
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I don't think I got that many at the height of last years heatwave.