Author: David Bradley

Well, after the heady days of late July and August with dozens of different moths coming to the actinic light trap that I borrowed, numbers of species have diminished. The chilly and occasionally damp evenings here in VC29 mean there is less nocturnal lepidopteran activity overall, although there always seems to be a good number of Large Yellow Underwings, Vine’s Rustics, and one or two Setaceous Hebrew Characters in the trap by morning. And, usually, there is the one oddity that keeps me lighting up just for the treat of a new species.

There was a Large Ranunculus a couple of nights ago and a hint of a big, dark Hawk-moth that rattled around in the dark among our shrubbery but didn’t get caught in the trap. It may well have been a Red Underwing or an Old Lady, I didn’t get a good look, but I hold out hope that it was actually a Convolvulus Hawk-moth, and if it warms up again, it may well return. [Had to wait until September 2022!)

Anyway, this morning there was a small dark species on the egg boxes, speckly but sooty black to my bleary eye. It had much more apparent creamy yellow markings once I got the photo up on my screen. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a particularly sharp photo, which is a shame.

It turns out to be a Waved Black Parascotia fuliginaria. It’s unusual in that its resting posture (wing position) is more like the moths known as Geometers (so-called because their caterpillars appear to measure out the earth, inch-worms, they’re often called). The waved black is actually a member of the Erebidae within the huge superfamily known as owlets, the Noctuidae.

Admin and master moth-er Leonard C on the Moths Flying Tonight UK facebook group points out that this species is a fungus feeder (the caterpillars also eat rotting wood) and “will certainly be the star of your catch”, while another admin Mark M told me he was very envious of the find and that for his county, Devon (specifically, VC3), there has only been one specimen recorded since 1995. The nocturnal adults purportedly fly June to August, so interesting that there’s one mid-September.

The Sallow (Cirrhia icteritia) is a Noctuid moth (Xyleninae). I’ve seen a couple of them in the actinic trap over the last few days. It’s a common species in the UK although if you spot one you might be confused by the appearance of another of the same species that does not have the same colouration. It flies in September-October and is attracted to light and sugar solutions (it has feeding mouth parts, unlike many other adult moths). Initially, the larvae (caterpillars) feed on the catkins of the sallow (more often known as willow trees, these days), hence the moth’s common name.

I videoed the specimen pictured above, briefly while it did its warmup exercises ready to take flight.

This is another Sallow specimen, note the rather different colouration from the first

A few more mothing favourites from six weeks of trapping. The full collection can be seen with captions in my Lepidoptera gallery on Imaging Storm.

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

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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.