Author: David Bradley

The Lepidoptera, the scaly-winged insects we know as moths and butterflies, have become something of a citizen science preoccupation for me over the last year or so, hopefully at least a few of you noticed.

I’ve talked about how many of these insects are perhaps dowdy and drab but there is such huge variety in their form, shape, patterns, and behaviour and so many are brighter and more colourful and intriguing than the moths we call butterflies in English. With more than 2500 species in the British Isles, what’s an amateur naturalist going to do, but study, photograph, and write about them?

Yesterday one of my colleagues on the Facebook group “UK Moths Flying Tonight” posted a photo of a moth known as Buff Arches, Habrosyne pyritoides (Hufnagel, 1766). I was envious and hoping to see one today, and there here we are, there was one in the trap, hence my photos. The UK Moths site says of Buff Arches:

The combination of smooth grey, white and russet-brown make this delicately-marked moth one of the prettiest, especially when observed at close range.

Now, many Lepidoptera are patterned and colourful. Often the markings help camouflage the insect making it look like a leaf or a piece of twig. Buff Arches is particularly well marked and intricate and, at first, I couldn’t see through its disguise.

My expert lep friend Leonard Cooper pointed out that it’s not trying to look like a leaf or a twig, it actually resembles a shard of flint. Buff Arches, in other words, has evolved a disguise that makes it look like a piece of naturally napped stone. It is common in wooded areas of the southern half of Britain but is absent from Scotland. There’s a clue in the species’ scientific name as to what the people who named it thought it looked like – Habrosyne pyritoides, that term “pyritoides” literally means resembling pyrite (the mineral iron pyrite, iron sulfide*). And, if you didn’t picture it as a sherd of flint, then thinking of it as a lump of mineral might fool you.

Incidentally, The Cinnabar is so-called for another mineral connection, the red of its wings is very same hue as mercury sulfide, commonly known as cinnabar.

Meanwhile, that Citizen Science stuff I mentioned, well it’s basically about recording what turns up in the garden, I’ve had at least a couple of Cambridgeshire rarities – Light-feathered Rustic and The Spinach – so those have been logged with the County Recorder. You can keep up to date with all the other leps in my logbook here.

Scientific moth trap haul was much improved during a wet but balmy June night: 105+ moths of 31+ species. My hunch had been right based on the activity I’d seen around the actinic light after midnight. Despite the drizzle, it was almost balmy.

This is one of those moths that most readers will just think, “ah, yes, typical moth – boring, grey, brown, ewww”. And superficially, yes, it is not a lot to look at. But, it’s a bit of a rarity and it was drawn to my scientific trap on the night of 31st July 2018 and photographed in the trap the next morning. It’s only recently that my mothing and birding friend Ian was scanning through my Mothematics Gallery and noticed I’d labelled this as queried and not confirmed an ID.

I have now confirmed it as Light Feathered Rustic (Agrotis cinerea, Denis & Schiffermüller], 1775). Indicators are that line about 1/3rd of the way down and also the finger-like projections towards the termen. However, August is well outside the moth’s usual May to June flying season. But, it is suspected of having a second partial brood later in the summer. Moreover, this is a rarity in VC29 (Cambridgeshire) and East Anglia in general.

I spoke to Bill Mansfield the County Recorder, he and others have said it’s definitely A. cinerea. Astonishingly, Bill’s last record for Cambridgeshire was in 1991. He also points out that the only time it was recorded in Huntingdonshire was 1951 and Northamptonshire has no record of it since 2004. He is checking with Bedfordshire.

The species is one of the family Noctuidae, colloquially known as owlets, little owls (Noctua is Latin for little owl). They’re generally night-flying species and their larvae (caterpillars) known as  “armyworms” and “cutworms” are plant pests – they form destructive garrisons of larvae and cut the stems of plants. There are almost 12000 species of owlet moths around the world.

No spectacular Hawk-moths today, nothing even particularly brightly coloured or intriguing at all…except for this little creamy white one with two distinctive black spots and lots of speckles.

I couldn’t ID it so turned to Twitter and got an identification from lep expert Sean Foote within minutes – Anania perlucidalis (Huebner, 1809) and about the same time by Chris Knott on the Facebook group “Moths UK Flying Tonight“. The species only has an official scientific name, the modern common name is Fenland Pearl, and is not necessarily in the books. In fact, it’s not in my book at all under either name, which is perhaps why I struggled to find it.

According to the UK Moths site, it was first seen in the British Isles on a Huntingdonshire fen, just up the road from us here in Cambridgeshire. It’s a localised species, lives on fenland and coastal parts of East Anglia and the South East of England. The site says little is known about the lifecycle of this species although it is thought that the larvae feed on Cirsium and Carduus thistles. The Wikipedia is very terse but corroborates it as a June-July and August flyer depending on location and that the larvae feed on Cirsium.

I keep a log of all the moths drawn to the scientific trap as well as posting species new for me (NFM) or new for the year (NFY) in my Mothematics Gallery.

It’s the fiftieth anniversary of George Dubya’s favourite childhood book – The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle…of course, Dubya was 23 when it was first published, which might explain a lot. I don’t think Trump had graduated to storybooks by that age.

But, I have some shocking news for you…to my eye, The VHC looks like a type of lepidopteral larva known as an inchworm or geometer, the type that measure out the marigolds…well…actually the earth, hence their name “geo-meter” – earth measurer.

Anyway, inchworms don’t metamorphose into beautiful butterflies as The VHC apparently does in Carle’s book…they, of course, transform into moths! Which of the 23000 Geometridae is represented in Carle’s book I cannot tell you. That said, have a look at the larva of the Peppered Moth, it’s close. Moreover, the Peppered Moth has a special place in natural history, you can read about its industrial evolution here.