Category: Biology

It was 24th July that I overcame my squeamishness about moths, it wasn’t so much a phobia, just a bit of a fluttering anxiety. Anyway, having been trapping for a good proportion of the time since, I’ve seen some quite startling diversity, which I don’t feel I even knew existed in the world of lepidoptera. As, I’ve mentioned before, there are about 2500 species of moth in the UK, there are also migrants, abberations and other anomalies.

Here are a few of my favourites so far:

The full collection can be seen with captions in my Lepidoptera gallery on Imaging Storm.

My mate Brian Stone suggested that getting into moths was like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole…it certainly feels that way with around 2500 species in the UK alone any one of which might turn up in a trap or be flitting around the garden day or night. Compare that number to the 50 or so species of butterfly we have here (strictly speaking butterflies are just a sub-group of moths anyway).

Down that rabbit hole, there are owlets, geometers, hawks and sphinxes, micros, and countless other classifications. Some of the families contain hundreds of species some just contain a single member. Check out the UK Moths website for a near-definitive gallery. Me? I’ve just passed photographing and identifying about 80 different moths.

There are also the obviously and not so obviously sexually dimorphic species (male and female look very different), the aberrations (moths that have strayed from the normal plan of shape and size, but usually just pattern), the second and third brood specimens for those moths that breed several times in the season. And, let’s not forget the Large Yellow Underwings, the Broad-bordered Yellow Underwings, the Lesser Yellow Underwings, and the Small Yellow Underwings (add to that the Copper UWs, the Red UWs, the Clifden Nonpareil (Blue Underwing), the Straw Underwing, and the Old Lady (which looks to my eye like a grey underwing)!

Earlier in the week, I saw a female, second generation Purple Thorn, which looks very different from the standard Purple Thorn, but luckily was pictured in my Collins Complete Guide to British Butterflies and Moths. And, last night there was a “Gothic”, but it wasn’t the bog standard Gothic owlet (noctuid), it was a Feathered Gothic, and so different and it was a female, so different again. Fortunately, she was still there this morning for her early-morning photo shoot.

So, this one is Feathered, as opposed to just plain Gotchic, Beautiful Gothic, or Bordered Gothic. The male has feathered antennae (a common feature of the sexual dimorphism of moths as the feathered antennae evolved to detect tiny amounts of sex pheromone molecules released by the females). Otherwise the male and female look very similar in this species.

The adults fly August to September, this was my first sighting of one, 2nd September. They spend their time mostly in grasslands and the larvae (caterpillars) feed on grasses.

TL:DR – A few photos and a brief discussion of the Chinese Character moth

Regular Sciencebase readers will, by now, have realised that moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera, meaning scaly wings) have become a focus of my macro photography in recent weeks. Indeed, I’ve photographed and identified about 80 different species of lepidoptera, mainly in our back garden over the last month or so (23 July onwards, with a week off in August and a few missing days to give the moths a rest from overnight actinic light-trapping).

Anyway, you will also have realised that many moths have some rather outlandish and intriguing common names: Elephant Hawk-moth, Angle Shades, Dark Arches, Yellow Shell, Canary-shouldered Thorn, Setaceous Hebrew Character to name a few that I’ve photographed over the last month or so. I hadn’t seen the species known as the Chinese Character (Cilix glaucata) despite it being relatively common and flying at night at this time of year. It is found in Europe, Asia Minor, and North Africa.

Its common name you might imagine alludes to some feature of its patterning. The moth has what might be described as China-white wings, which are flecked with a series of small grey spots along the outer edge of the fore-wings. The inner edge has a dark brown “stain” that has areas of yellow and grey towards the middle of the wing. Nothing would suggest Chinese character, other than the porcelain colour of the wings, perhaps. Although a closer inspection and a whistful perception does reveal that the edge of the blotches resemble brush-and-ink markings that one might see in traditional Chinese script (apparently).

However, that colouration and patterning do serve a purpose. When the moth is at rest, with its curvy wings in a tent-like configuration it resembles nothing less honourable than a dollop of avian guano. It looks like bird poo, in other words! This is a highly evolved state, most predators will avert their taste buds and mouths when confronted with something that looks like poop.

Lepidoptera are the insects with scaly wings – the moths and butterflies, in other words. 160,000 species of moth worldwide, 20,000 butterflies. 2500 of the moths in the UK and a mere 52 butterfly species. Incidentally, the only truly distinguishing feature between moths and butterflies being that butterflies have club-like antennae and the majority of moths don’t.

Anyway, lepidoptera from the Greek “lepis” meaning scale” and “pteron” meaning wing (or feather). As in the flaky mica mineral lepidolite and the prehistoric winged reptiles, the pterosaurs.

So, anyway, here are some lepidoptera

You can see more of my lepidoptera photographs on my Imaging Storm website.

The Iron Prominent (Notodonta dromedarius) is fairly common across Great Britain, turned up in the trap a couple of times in the second week of August. Got better photos of the specimen on the morning of 13th where it sat on the back of my hand after jumping from its overnight resting place on a cardboard egg carton in the trap. It walked a little and then quickly fired up its wings to high-speed before flying off.

Two broods fly each year May-June and then again in August. Except in the North where they brood only once June-July, according to UKMoths. The humps on the green caterpillar’s back give rise to the second part of the scientific name. But, it’s the protruding tuft of hair on the trailing edge of the forewing in many species of the Notodonta moths that gives them the “prominent” of their common names. Although there are only four Notodontids in the UK, there are 3,800 known species in this family around the world, mostly in The Tropics.

Orange Swift (Triodia sylvina) – A first for the garden 13th August 2018 in three weeks or so of moth-ing with Rob’s homemade actinic Robinson trap.

Given how brightly coloured this specimen is compared to other photos of the species on UKMoths, for instance, I am assuming it is a male. The males are also smaller than the females, such sexual dimorphism does not seem to be a common trait in the moth world, although it does occur (viz some females are wingless and the Emperor Moth females are like a desaturated version of the male). The species is a member of the Hepialidae of which there are, it seems, only five members in the UK: Orange Swift (Triodia sylvina), Common Swift (Korscheltellus lupulina), Map-winged Swift (Korscheltellus fusconebulosa), Gold Swift (Phymatopus hecta), and the Ghost Moth (Hepialus humuli). Update: 11 May 2019, first Common Swift to the trap. Not seen any of these others yet.

The Orange Swift flies later in the year than the other Swifts, July-September (in the British Isles), so spotting one in the middle of August is about right, although UKMoths explains that it inhabits waste ground, moorland, and other wild places. Doesn’t say much for my gardening skills.

The larvae (caterpillars) feed on the roots of bracken, dandelion, dock, hop, and viper’s bugloss. It overwinters twice as a larva.

Night of 10th August 2018 saw a serious drop in temperature. We’ve been enjoying/sweltering in relatively balmy upper teens and into the 20s at night since May, but last night it dropped below 10 degrees Celsius in many places. The moth-ers are almost all reporting very few specimens in their traps. Personally, I had one Spectacle, a solitary Silver Y, a single Willow Beauty in the trap, and another on the white sheet hanging next to the light, and a few LBJs (Little Brown Jobs).

So here’s one of the highlights from a couple of weeks ago, a Canary-shouldered (Ennomos alniaria). It is a geometer moth (Geometridae) found across Europe. Geometers get their name from the behaviour of their larvae or caterpillars, which are whimsically also known as inchworms, their method of locomotion being reminiscent of someone measuring the earth. They’re also called loopers, for the “loop” the caterpillars form as they do their measuring.

In the UK, the adults breed in a single generation from July to September. They’re commonly found in woodland and gardens and the larvae eat the leaves of various deciduous trees. Indeed, the second part of its scientific binomial, the alniaria refers to the alder tree. The Ennominae are the largest sub-family of geometer moths, with some 9700 known species in 1100 genera.