Buff-tip – the sticky moth

Any moth-er will tell you, a lot of moths are shit…that’s not to say they don’t like them, rather lots of moths have evolved to resemble bird droppings. Among those that have camouflaged themselves as guano are the wondrous Chinese Character, the Lime-speck Pug, the Least Carpet and the Garden Carpet, and several others. They are unaware of their superficial resemblance to a dollop of tacky avian ordure. Anyway, it’s what’s on the inside that matters and moths have feelings too…sort of.

Other moths have a grander perspective on camouflage, Buff Arches, as previously mentioned looks like a chunk of knapped flint and so can hide among the stones on the woodland floor with predators unaware of its presence.

But, today I want to talk about a sticky moth. I don’t mean the species has adhesive qualities, although if you let it walk on to your finger you can feel it clinging on to your skin. No, the moth we know as the Buff-tip looks like a piece of broken twig. A twig from a birch tree to be precise. Unfortunately, the best twig I found was from our wisteria, so he had to make do. In my first photo, it is difficult to see where moth and twig begin and end. Is that twiglet the alpha to the moth’s omega or its yang to its yin? You decide.

In this photo, the moth was still clinging to its twig, almost for dear life, and in my photo it’s more obvious which is which, but…are you sure, you’re seeing it the right way?

The Old Lady with the Black Underwing and the Grave Brocade

As the summer moves on, so the diversity and numbers of moths (Lepidoptera) active each night grows. We’re coming to the end of the first week of July and already one night’s haul has passed 200 specimens of 40 different species, logged, identified, and the interesting and ones new to the garden photographed.

Old Lady moth. Mormo maura
Old Lady moth. Mormo maura, one of the larger moths of the British Isles

160+ moths of more than 30 species were drawn to the actinic light of the scientific moth trap on the night of 5th July. I had heard and possibly seen an Old Lady (Mormo maura) in the garden a few nights ago, but this morning she was nestled in one of the egg trays in the trap awaiting her photocall. This species is large (30mm along the edge of the forewing). Far bigger than the many micros that I didn’t log in detail. You can see the morning logs for the leps here.

The Old Lady, also known as a Black Underwing, and in an earlier time, the Grave Brocade, was accompanied by two Privet Hawk-moths (the UK’s largest species of moth) and a single Elephant Hawk-moth both of which I’ve photographed and written about here previously. The Old Lady is not commonly drawn to light according to the UK Moths site, although my Collins lep guide says they will often come indoors attracted by the light. Regardless, this one definitely was drawn to the light and settled in for the night. It had a chunk missing from its left forewing, so I did a little ‘shopping to tidy her up.

Why is this noctuid, or owlet, moth, called Old Lady, you are probably asking? Well, the sombre answer is that the dark and funereal colours of this moth reminded those who named it of the penchant of elderly widows of Europe for wearing black. This was long before the Victorian era though.

The delicate patterning of the moth’s wings, according to Peter Marren in his book of moth names, Emperors, Admirals, and Chimney Sweepers, resembles that kind of black lace. Intriguingly, adds Marren, the scientific name – Mormo maura – The first part of the name is the name of a hideous she-monster used by Greek parents, apparently, to encourage errant children to behave. “Mormo will come and bite you, if you don’t behave! The second part of the name alludes to the Moors. In Holland, the Old Lady, Marren tells us, becomes a black orphan – Zwart weeskind.

The June Gap

UPDATE: Reading Oates, I realise now that the June Gap is more widely appreciated, particularly by beekeepers rather than butterfliers. Indeed, the gap isn’t really about the invertebrates at all, it’s about the flowers. The spring flowers come and go and there is commonly a gap between their final blooms and the emergence of summer flowers.

It is this period that beekeepers think of as The June Gap, a period when there is far less nectar available for their apian charges. This, of course,  means there is less food for other nectaring species, such as butterflies, and so they have adapted to cope with this in terms of their flight periods and reproductive cycles, hence the hibernators, the spring emergers, and the summer species.

However, climate change and change ecosystems now mean that much is altered from when the notion of a June Gap was first discussed and indeed, the very notions of the immutable four seasons in the temperate zones are being disturbed by global effects driven by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

There always seems to have been some overlap between what we might call the spring butterflies (Orange Tips, Brimstone, Peacocks etc) and the emergence of the summer species, like this Ringlet, the Heaths, the Blues, and the Meadow Browns, Skippers etc. But some of those Spring species keep going well into the summer and some of them have a second brood too.

Ringlet butterfly, with swollen-thighed beetle bottom left
Female Ringlet butterfly, with swollen-thighed beetle bottom left
Comma (left), Ringlet (right)
Comma (left), Ringlet (right)
Large Skipper
Large Skipper

So, while there may have been a June Gap in flowers (that too is changing), insects and plant life don’t tend to obey our qualitative rules. Indeed, many years there are commonly more butterflies and more butterfly species on the wing in June than in the earlier spring months or later in the summer.

For more of my butterfly photos, check out the Lepidoptera galleries on my Imaging Storm website.

Coastal Lepidoptera

UPDATE: The huge numbers of very worn, migrant Painted Lady butterflies that we and many other people saw at the end of June and into July. It was an irruption and is a good indicator of a coming long, hot summer.

Apparently, this species which migrates into Europe from North Africa never gets its weather forecast wrong. They only turn up in such large numbers here when the weather is going to be good. Their larvae feed mainly on thistles, including the notorious creeping thistle, the bane of the allotmenteer with a bad back. #AllotmentLife.

Painted Lady, Vanessa cardui, North Norfolk, 29 June 2019
Painted Lady, Vanessa cardui, North Norfolk, 29 June 2019

The second generation will hatch from eggs laid on those thistles and will be much more richly coloured than their migrant parents who lose so many of their wing scales on their journey to these shores.


However, we need to talk about Vanessa. Vanessa cardui is the Painted Lady in Cynthia’s group. No, not the backing singer in an all-girl 1960s Northern soul outfit, she’s a butterfly. On our hike from the campsite in Stiffkey to the pine-backed beach huts at Wells, a ~16km round trip along the coastal footpath, we saw dozens of V cardui and very few other butterfly species. There were a few Small Tortoiseshell and lots of Meadow Brown, and the occasional Speckled Wood.

I don’t recall ever seeing so many Painted Ladies at one time. They migrate to Britain and Europe from North African and the Mediterranean region in Spring. For whatever reason, there seems that a large number has arrived on these shores.

Silver Y feeding on and pollinating wildflowers along the Norfolk coastal path at dusk.
One of many Silver Y feeding on and pollinating wildflowers along the Norfolk coastal path at dusk.

On the return journey from Wells, as dusk ultimately fell we also saw plenty of grass moths of different species and dozens of feeding and pollinating wildflowers Silver Y (Autographa gamma) and one Yellow Shell (Camptogramma bilineata), and a Cinnabar (Tyria jacobaeae).

Stiffkey campsite to Wells and the pine woods, 10 miles there and back
Stiffkey campsite to Wells and the pine woods, 10 miles there and back

 

A hint of flint

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.

A green moth that’s almost white

TL:DR – There are numerous green moths, they have evolved to mimic leaves and so evade predators through a simple camouflage mechanism.


The Light Emerald, is a geometer moth (its larvae are inchworms, measuring the earth). It is a delicate green, but not always, sometimes the green is stronger, sometimes it’s almost not green at all, but you can still tell that it is Campaea margaritaria. I had a very pale specimen to the scientific moth trap in June 2019 and posted a photo along with other interesting moths that were drawn to the actinic light.

Strongly pigmented Light Emerald

A colleague, Martin Honey, on the Moths UK Flying Tonight Facebook group commented that he was aware of chemical research into the green pigment in this species and how it is known to be a less stable compound than any of the green pigments in an entirely different group of moths that sometimes have green, the noctuids, also known as the owlets.

An almost white Light Emerald, it’s green pigment has degraded

The paper is from 1994 and explains the chemistry of the Light Emerald green: The chemistry and systematic importance of the green wing pigment in emerald moths (Lepidopera: Geometridae, Geometrinae). You can read about the research here. It’s definitely something I might have written about back in the day when I was doing weekly chemistry news for New Scientist magazine and others.

The green pigment in question is called geoverdin and it is the only green pigment the moth needs. Chemically speaking it was once thought to be a bile pigment, but it turns out to actually be a derivative of the green pigment from photosynthesising plants, chlorophyll, consumed during the moth’s larval (caterpillar) stage. The researchers in the paper cited used good-old thin-layer chromatography to give the elusive moth pigment a little TLC and discern its characteristics.

Unfortunately, the team does not show the structure in their paper and a search for any other reference turns up nothing. However, I did find reference to the original PhD thesis from which the research paper was derived wherein it suggests that geoverdin is derived from neither bile pigments nor chlorophyll. I’ve contacted one of the team to find out more and will hopefully be able to update this post soon.

Four Elephants on the Bottom Lime

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.

Never thought I’d see so many HMs at once: 4 Elephant Hawk-moths and a Lime Hawk-moth. Also, had my first Ghost Moth (M), first Light Arches (2x), first Mottled Beauty.
Four Elephant Hawk-moths and a Lime
Male Ghost Moth (Hepialus humuli, Linnaeus, 1758)

Light Arches (Apamea lithoxylaea, [Denis & Schiffermüller], 1775)

Light Feathered Rustic, Agrotis cinerea

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.

Light Feathered Rustic (Agrotis cinerea)
Light Feathered Rustic (Agrotis cinerea)

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.

The Fenland Pearl – a local moth for local people

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.

Fenland Pearl, Anania perlucidalis (Hübner, [1809])
The Fenland Pearl, (Anania perlucidalis)
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.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar at 50

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.

Peppered moth caterpillar, Biston betularia
Is the Peppered Moth caterpillar, Biston betularia, the true Very Hungry Caterpillar?