07 Wednesday Dec 2022
Posted in insects
This tiny moth was a lovely surprise from last week’s wildflower searching. I only managed a couple of quick shots before it flew into the vegetation but they were good enough for my friendly local moth expert to identify this as a Beautiful plume (Amblyptilia acanthadactyla), which George also told me is ‘One of the few plumes that overwinters as an adult’. Beautiful, indeed!
07 Friday Oct 2022
Posted in insects
The migrants just keep coming, and I love to see them because it always seems so amazing to me that a little moth like this, with a wingspan of just 26-32mm, can fly all the way to south Wales from somewhere in Europe.
Meet the Rush veneer (Nomophila noctuella), which the UK Moths website says ‘can often be found in large numbers at coastal watch-points, and tends to occur in the adult stage between May and September’. At least six of these little migrants flew up from the path as I walked through a local field earlier this week.
19 Friday Aug 2022
Posted in insects
Apart from Five- and Six-spotted burnets and the various grass moths that flit up as I walk along pathways through meadows, I’ve not seen many day-flying moths recently so these Shaded broad-bars (Scotopteryx chenopodiata) were a nice surprise. They fly during July and August, and can be found throughout Britain, particularly in areas where vetches and clovers – their larval food plants – grow. As you can see, the colours of these moths can be quite variable (the Butterfly Conservation website has more examples).
06 Wednesday Jul 2022
Posted in insects
Though I know death is inevitable for all living creatures, I’m always sad when I find something dead. On a practical level, of course, it’s often an opportunity to look more closely at that creature, which is what happened with this Scarlet tiger moth (Callimorpha dominula) I found on a pavement last week. That scarlet colour is just glorious!
17 Friday Jun 2022
Posted in insects
Tags
At the risk of stating the obvious, moths are amazing! And I’ve been lucky to find some gorgeous examples in recent weeks. As I’m running out of image storage space on this blog, the easiest way to share my photos is via a slideshow video. Here, then, is a short tribute to moths, a celebration of their incredible diversity of shapes and sizes, patterns and colours.
18 Monday Apr 2022
Posted in insects
Apart from Colin, the Angle shades moth I reared from a caterpillar, this tiny beauty was my first moth of the year. This is Pyrausta purpuralis, also known as Common purple & gold, one of two quite similar Purple & gold species, though P. purpuralis can be identified by the extra yellow spot on its hindwings. I was surprised to read that the larval plants for these wee moths are Corn mint and Thyme, neither of which plant I recall having seen at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park though the moths are quite common there. I’ll need to investigate further.
26 Saturday Mar 2022
I am delighted to announce that, 32 days after he pupated, Colin the Angle shades moth has hatched (I keep calling him Colin for convenience but he could in fact be a she, a Colleen).
Isn’t he gorgeous? Beautifully mottled in shades of brown, beige, peach and green, for camouflage. I offered him the outside this morning, put him on the window ledge, but there’s a cool wind blowing and he made no move. So, he’s back in his jar until the air warms up and he has the strength to make his way in the world.
21 Saturday Aug 2021
Posted in insects
21 Friday Aug 2020
Tags
British moths, Euplagia quadripunctaria, Jersey tiger, Lavernock Nature Reserve, moth, tiger moths
As many local events in Nature’s calendar have been tracking a couple of weeks earlier than usual this year, I first started this year’s tiger hunting ten days ago but it took three visits to Lavernock Nature Reserve and much staring at the flowers of Hemp-agrimony before I finally found a tiger.
I am not, of course, talking about the big cats – I am vehemently opposed to all hunting! My hunt was for the gorgeous moth that is the Jersey tiger (Euplagia quadripunctaria).
Having spread northwards in southern England, from Devon in to Somerset, these moths tackled the watery expanse of the Bristol Channel in stages, recorded on the island of Flat Holm in 2008 but not making the final flight across to the south Wales coast until 2012.
Though they have avoided big city Cardiff – the single Cardiff record thus far was in 2017, the Jersey tiger now appears to be well established along a section of the Vale of Glamorgan coastline, from Penarth to Barry, and presumably it will spread further as climate and environmental conditions allow.
Last Monday, 17 August, I spotted these two, feeding quite close together, at Lavernock (the first two photos here are one moth; the other three show the second tiger). Though they have been recorded on various flowers, I’ve only ever seen them on Hemp-agrimony, which is one of the food plants used by their larvae. I live in hope of finding one of their funky-looking caterpillars but I was over the moon to see my first tigers of the year.
11 Saturday Jul 2020
We’ve had cooler, greyer, wetter weather in recent days, which isn’t so good for seeing hosts of butterflies and other insects flying around the wildflowers but, if you can find them, it does slow those insects down a bit making macro photography a little easier … sometimes. A slow, quiet, stealthy approach is still required as, to take macro photos with my Olympus camera, I need to get as close as an inch to my subject. Mostly, the insects fly or scuttle off, but this stunning Silver Y moth was a rather lovely exception to my usual failures.
earthstar 
You must be logged in to post a comment.