Author: David Bradley

UPDATE: Greece, June 2024 – Added Catocala nymphaea to my list of photographed Erebid “underwings”.

UPDATE: New Forest, 25 Aug 2022 – I finally trapped the Light Crimson Underwing (Catocala promissa) at our holiday house in North Poulner, Hampshire, which completes the British set for me, I believe. There’s a short video clip of the LCUW on the Sciencebase Instagram, with Going to the Chapel as the background music for good reason.* In the summer of 2023, Adrian Matthews caught an LCUW in Chesterton, a first for Cambs.

The Catocala moths are a group of relatively large moths in the family Erebidae. They are often known as “underwing moths” because of the intriguing colours and patterns of their hindwings, which are usually hidden from view under the forewings while the moths are at rest and only revealed either in flight or when the insect is startled.

Not to be confused with dozens of others species in the Noctuidae that have the word underwing as part of their common name (e.g. Yellow Underwing, Straw Underwing, etc) and Geometridae (Orange Underwing).

These large Catocala underwings are not common in The British Isles and where they are known are often localised to particular niches. In my time mothing since late July 2018, I have trapped, photographed and released three of the group: Red Underwing, Dark Crimson Underwing, and the (once extinct here) Clifden Nonpareil (the Blue Underwing). Actually, I had the Red in the garden in 2019 and then saw it a few days later on a camping trip to the eastern coast of Norfolk.

I am yet to see the Oak Yellow Underwing, the Rosy Underwing, the Minsmere Red Underwing, or the French Red Underwing. There are 30 Catocala species in Europe and 250 globally.

*Interesting to note that they all have scientific names alluding to nuptials and wedding nights. The naturalists who named them, whimsically imagining that the brightly coloured hindwings were like a bride’s brightly coloured bloomers! So we have C. sponsa, C. nuptia, and C. promissa. The Clifden Nonpareil is the exception, its scientific name, C. fraxini, alluding to the ash tree, wholly inappropriately as its food plant is the aspen.

More moths, birds, and other nature shots via the Sciencebase Instagram, please join me there.

Clifden Nonpareil – For the incomparable moth from Clivedon House, blue is the colour!

The UK Moths website described Catocala fraxini as the Victorian collector’s classic all-time favourite”. It also goes by the name of the Blue Underwing because of the shock of blue on the hindwings, which are usually covered by the forewings when the moth is at rest and are exposed when it reacts to a threat.

The moth was well known in the British Isles in Kent and Norfolk until the middle part of the the 20th century, the site explains, but it ultimately became extinct in terms of being a breeding resident on these shores and was seen only occasionally by lepidopterists as a vagrant immigrant from the continental mainland.

Thankfully, the species has been gaining new traction in the South of England and in East Anglia. It is now thoughtto be recolonising and is almost certainly breeding in the south. As an amateur moth-er, I hoped to draw this species beyond compare to the actinic lure I light up some nights in our Cambridgeshire garden. I didn’t hold out much hope until I heard on the mothing grapevine that there had been one or two sighted in neighbouring counties.

Then, in the middle of August, a fellow moth-er at the other end of our village here, reported a sighting of a Clifden in his garden. At the time, the closest I came to the fabled Blue, was another Catocala species, the Dark Crimson Underwing, that came to the actinic lure (it’s just a UV lamp,  by the way). The Dark Crimson is usually confined to the New Forest, I was happy to see it.

A couple of weeks later my village friend reported a second Blue and his own NFG (new for the garden) Dark Crimson. I had my fingers crossed as tightly as they can be, but no luck. The autumn kicked, in then a mini-heatwave or two. There were endless Large Yellow Underwings (which are unrelated to the Catocala species, being Noctuidae rather than Eribidae. There were also lots of Lunar Underwings, yet another noctuid with veiny forewings and a moon-like crescent on each hindwing. Lots of Square-spot Rustics too and the Black Rustics of autumn. But no Blue.

Finally, on the night of 28th September at about 22h50, I let the dog into the garden for her late-night ablutions and checked the actinic lure, immediately spotting lots of craneflies on the adjacent wall, a Lunar Underwing on the box itself and…oh…there…an enormous speckled, patterned, grey moth with its shimmering band of blue on each hindwing exposed when the moth is disturbed. It truly is beyond compare, nonpareil.

This specimen was a little battered by the time it reached my lure. It is about 48 mm from palps to the tip of its folded forewings. The books describe it by wingspan which can be 80 to 90 mm. For a British species, it is truly enormous and impressive, not quite as big as our largest resident the Privet Hawk-moth which can be up to 120mm when its wings are fully expressed.

 

With Covid-19 lockdown hitting some people very hard, it seems churlish to complain about its effects on me. It felt hard – no pub visits with friends, no limited time outdoors and so not much chance for nature photography and long walks with the dog, no rehearsing with C5 The Band nor the TyrannoChorus choir, no panto to plan for etc, like I say, relatively easy, but still hard.

As such, I was really hoping for an exciting moth year to keep me sane, and I have had some crackers, but numbers and diversity seem to have been low…all I’ve really seen for the last couple of weeks are quite a few Large Yellow Underwings and Square Spot Rustics and little else.. They’re of interest in their own right, of course, but once you’ve seen a few dozen, you’ve seen them all.

I am yet to see the so-called Blue Underwing, the Clifden Nonpareil, a beautiful and fascinating European species that seems to be spreading northwards (I hear they’ve been ticked in Shropshire now). It’s odd a fellow moth-er in this village had two of these a couple of weeks ago. I did see its relative the Dark Crimson Underwing a month before he did. That species is usually only seen in the New Forest but is also spreading its wings so to speak.

UPDATE: Clifden Nonpareil actually turned up at the end of September.

Anyway, without going into all the statistical detail of 250 or so species I’ve noted this year so far more than 30 of them were new for the garden (NFG), new to me (NTM), in fact, I’d not seen them live before. Where a name has “agg” that means aggregate and it is to mark those species that look superficially identical to others and cannot be separated into distinct species without dissection or DNA analysis.

1. Agonopterix heracliana-ciliella agg
2. Beauty, Brindled (Lycia hirtaria, Clerck, 1759)
3. Bell, Two-coloured (Eucosma obumbratana, Lienig & Zeller, 1846)
4. Brindle, Clouded (Apamea epomidion, Haworth, 1809)
5. Campion, The (Sideridis rivularis, Fabricius, 1775)
6. Case-bearer, Coast Green (Coleophora amethystinella, Ragonot, 1885)
7. Clifden Nonopareil (Catocala fraxini, Linnaeus 1758)
8. Emerald, Common (Hemithea aestivaria, Hübner, 1789)
9. Figure of Eighty (Tethea ocularis, Linnaeus, 1767)
10. Footman, Orange (Eilema sororcula, Hufnagel, 1766)
11. Hawk-moth, Pine (Sphinx pinastri, Linnaeus, 1758)
12. Highflyer, May (Hydriomena impluviata, Denis & Schiffermüller], 1775)
13. Knot Grass (Acronicta rumicis, Linnaeus, 1758)
14. Knot-horn, Twin-barred (Homoeosoma sinuella, Fabricius, 1794)
15. Knot-horn, Warted (Acrobasis repandana, Fabricius, 1798)
16. Lackey, The (Malacosoma neustria, Linnaeus, 1758)
17. Lozotaenia forsterana (Fabricius, 1781)
18. Marble, Diamond-back (Eudemis profundana, Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775)
19. Nutmeg, The (Anarta trifolii)
20. Oegoconia agg. (Haworth, 1828)
21. Pearl, Lesser (Sitochroa verticalis, Linnaeus, 1758)
22. Pearl, Rusty Dot (Udea ferrugalis, Hübner, 1796)
23. Pearl, Straw-barred (Pyrausta despicata, Scopoli, 1763)
24. Pseudoswammerdamia combinella
25. Ptycholoma lecheana
26. Rustic, Brown (Rusina ferruginea, Esper, 1785)
27. Rustic, Clancy’s (Caradrina kadenii, Freyer, 1836)
28. Shears, Tawny (Hadena perplexa, Denis & Schiffermüller], 1775)
29. Straw, Scarce Bordered (Helicoverpa armigera, Hübner, 1808)
30. Tortrix, Red-barred (Ditula angustiorana, Haworth, 1811)
31. Underwing, Dark Crimson (Catocala sponsa, Linnaeus, 1767)
32. Webber, Juniper (Dichomeris marginella, Fabricius, 1781)

There is a whole group of moths called “carpets”. Despite (un)popular opinion about moths they do not eat carpets. Indeed, there are only one or two British moths (out of 11000 species!) that feed on wool and other textiles.

No, these moths are called carpets because when they were identified and scientifically named carpets were luxury items and the naturalists wanted to honour the beauty of these little creatures by naming them after something luxurious. This Green Carpet, Colostygia pectinataria, was drawn to the actinic light in our back garden last night and photographed this morning.