Day 12 of 30 Days Wild and it’s been all about the moths. This weekend has been the annual Moth Night (which slightly confusingly has run for 3 nights) – a celebration of all things mothy. The theme of this year’s Moth Night was Hawkmoths, so I was really hoping I’d get some in the traps.

I had both moth traps out last night and was up at 4am this morning to empty them before the robin beat me to it. The last 2 days I’ve been pretty much eyeball to eyeball with this robin as he has clearly learnt that moth traps provide easy pickings! I only have to turn around for a second and he’s there sitting on the edge of the trap, peering in. If only he could tell me their names, he’d be a big help!

I’d run one trap on Friday night as usual for my weekly Garden Moth Scheme count. So I could use those numbers for Moth Night too – great when the data can be used for 2 schemes at once!

 

Last night though I put the other trap out as well (I can only use the wooden one for the Garden Moth Scheme) to try and maximise my haul for Moth Night. Fortunately the rain held off last night until about 5:30am, by which time I had collected all the moths ready to photograph at a more civilised hour.

I’ve spent a large part of today identifying the moths I’d photographed this morning and yesterday. I’ve no idea yet how other moth trappers got on, but I was pretty pleased with my total count of 174 moths of 41 species over the 2 days. Interestingly the number of traps didn’t make much difference – I got 27 species the first night with one trap and 29 last night with the 2 traps.

I was really chuffed to get 2 species of Hawkmoth – the Elephant (on the left below) and the Small Elephant (on the right obviously!).  We get the bigger one quite often in June and the small one less frequently. It would have been nice to get some of the other big hawkmoths too, but that’s the way it goes.

The dominant species in terms of sheer numbers was the Heart and Dart, which accounted for about a third of the total number of individuals. I love the way many of the moths are named – the Heart & Dart is so called because it has dark markings shaped like a heart and a dart! It does what it says on the tin!

The other numerous moth in the trap was a micro one – the Diamond Back Moth – named for its diamond shaped pattern on its back! This tiny moth is actually an immigrant and they’ve been blown over to the UK in recent weeks in huge numbers – they even got a mention on Springwatch.

The Diamond Back wasn’t the only incomer, I also trapped a Silver Y moth each night – again named for the silvery Y shape on its wing. The Silver Y is one of the more famous immigrants in the moth world and even got recorded as part of the Big Butterfly Count last year.

Moths can generally be split into Macro and Micro moths. I tend to prefer the Macro ones because not only are they bigger, but they are usually easier to identify. This weekend brought some particularly impressive ones. The Scarlet Tiger is so bright and colourful it is often mistaken for a butterfly. They regularly fly in sunshine, but this one came to the trap at the weekend.

The Puss Moth and Pale Tussock are two other large species that turned up for Moth Night. I love the way the Puss sits with its front legs stretched out ahead.

I was really pleased to find this next moth in the trap this morning as I’d only ever seen it in the books before – the Figure of 80 – so named because it looks like someone’s written 80 on each of its wings!

Although the Micro moths are obviously smaller and so generally harder to ID, many of them are really quite stunning when you look at them close up, like this Cherry Bark Moth (top) and Barred Marble (below).  They’re both probably less than a centimetre long, but there’s such detail in their colouring.

 

So that’s Moth Night over for another year. Hopefully they will have had lots of results submitted from all over the country and it will have raised the profile of moths generally.  I really enjoy taking part in projects like this; it’s great sharing the photos on social media and seeing what all the other moth-ers around the country are getting in their traps.

For more info have a look at their website:  http://www.mothnight.info/www/

 

Weed no. 12 in my 30 Lazy Weeds from the garden and it’s the Buttercup. One of our most iconic flowers, that even children will recognise. Most kids will have tried the old custom where you hold a buttercup under your chin and if it reflects yellow, it means you like butter. Of course all it really proves is that the buttercup’s petals reflect light very well, but that’s not quite so romantic a thought! Maybe it is that old custom though, as buttercups hold an innocent charm for me that few of the other flowers do.