First time I looked in an actinic moth trap, we’d landed a Poplar Hawk-moth. A phone camera snapshot is now in the moths section of my fast-growing wildlife gallery here, the one that runs in parallel with the bird gallery. The two nights I’ve had the trap lit in my garden, I’ve caught some nice, small species, but no more Hawk-moths. A highlight of last night, although one that didn’t ever enter the trap, was the Jersey Tiger (Euplagia quadripunctaria).
Jersey Tiger
My moth expert friend Brian Stone, of whom I have spoken in the birding context many times, pointed out that this specimen is probably a migrant given my location (north of Cambridge), although it could be due to range expansion. According to Ian UK moths site: “This species was until recently restricted in distribution to the Channel Islands and parts of the [British] south coast. On the mainland, it is commonest in south Devon, but colonies have recently appeared in Dorset and the Isle of Wight, and it has also been found in other southern counties.”
I asked Brian whether I was likely to see any Hawk-moths, having been disappointed after that initial success with the Poplar.
Poplar Hawk-moth
“During peak periods you will attract them without any difficulty,” he told me. “Poplar are double-brooded so you will get them from now on, Elephant should still be flying and Pine is a bit later and still plenty on the wing now but it is scarcer. With the weather [almost record-breaking prolonged period of hot and dry] we are having you could pull in one of the scarcer migrants like Convolvulus or one of the Hyles species.”
However, normally there would be fewer hawk-moths on the wing by late July. Lime Hawk peak in May/June and hardly any are seen by August. He added that it is possible to check out flight periods on local websites in your area. For me, closest would be Hants Moths. Brian also recalls that in one hot year (specifically, 1st July 2005) he trapped a Bedstraw Hawk-moth in his actinic trap, “a proper rarity”.
There is also the issue of whether one should use a trap on consecutive nights. “I tended not to run consecutive nights,” Brian told me. “You will tend to trap a fair few of the same [individual] moths and they need to get out there and do their thing. Plus you get a lie in.”
Literally, the easiest way to identify a moth is to have an expert friend, I’ve mentioned Brian and Rob in previous posts. They have helped me tag a couple of dozen different moth species over the last couple of days. I think, to be honest, that’s basically all of them, I think I identified just one myself.
Scalloped Oak
There are something like 160000 species of moth around the world, many without a name, many yet to be discovered, many species identified and long-since extinct, and many more that we never knew. The earliest known lepidoptera fossils date to between 40 and 50 million years ago.
Cloaked Minor
Etymologically the word moth comes from the Old English moððe, which is close to the Northumbrian word mohðe both similar to common Germanic, Old Norse motti, Dutch mot, and German motte. People with a morbid fear of moths are said to have mottephobia, those who love moths might be referred to as mottephiles.
Ruby Tiger
Okay, so there are a lot of different types of moth, many of them look very, very similar. Many cannot be distinguished from their close relatives by a superficial look at them and require dissection or genetic profiling to distinguish between them. Now, I mentioned having friends who can ID them for you, but obviously, pestering and brain-picking friends grows tiring…for those friends. There are plenty of websites that might help:
http://www.ukmoths.org.uk/ is probably the best place to start. Brian points out that you can use the family thumbnail search as a starting point. “If in doubt with a larger moth try noctuidae for moths with wings held tent-like and geometridae for those resting with the wings flat,” he suggests. “Only a guide though as not all in those families behave the same.
Willow Beauty
Another good resource is http://www.hantsmoths.org.uk/. You can browse by subfamily as well so it makes it a bit easier, he tells me. https://www.norfolkmoths.co.uk is also good for searching by thumbnail. Brian suggests that, “You should soon get a feel for the different families.”
Some of the websites have a “flying tonight” section, which alludes to what species might be in the air at any given time of year and so what you might expect to see in your trap in the morning and what the local pipistrelle bats will be dining on. For those in my locale (near Cambridge, UK), the best resource for the status of any given moth is http://www.hmbg.org/, Brian tells me. It spefically covers the old county of Hunts & Peterborough, but that’s close enough to be useful for anyone across inland East Anglia and the East Midlands, I suspect. There may be moth sites in your region that offer a similar “in the air tonight” update.
One aspect of moths that is truly fascinating is the range and the style of their common names…this is the list of what I’ve ID’ed (or had pointed out to me) just in two mornings of being a nouveau mottephile:
Blood vein (Timandra comae)
Brown-tail (Euproctis chrysorrhoea)
Buff Ermine (Spilosoma lutea)
Burnished Brass (Diachrysia chrysitis)
Cloaked Minor (Mesoligia furuncula)
Common Rustic agg. (Mesapamea secalis)
Copper Underwing (Amphipyra pyramidea)
Dark Arches (Apamea monoglypha)
Dusky Brocade (Apamea remissa)
Dusky Sallow Eremobia ochroleuca
Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua pronuba)
Least Carpet (Idaea rusticata)
Pebble Hook-tip (Drepana falcataria)
Poplar Hawk Moth (Laothoe populi)
Rose-flounced Tabby (Endotricha flammealis)
Ruby Tiger (Phragmatobia fuliginosa)
Scalloped Oak (Crocallis elinguaria)
The Dun-bar (Cosmia trapezina)
The Rustic/The Uncertain (Hoplodrina blanda/octogenaria)
Turnip Moth (Agrotis segetum)
Willow Beauty (Peribatodes rhomboidaria)
Some of those names are quite mundane. Large Yellow for instance, isn’t so grand, but Dusky Brocade, what imagery does that suggest? The Dun-bar sounds like a particularly enticing single-malt Scotch Whisky and The Uncertain beggars endless questions. Some of the names are functional, one might say, Poplar Hawk Moths, presumably lay their eggs preferentially in poplar trees, while the Scalloped Oak perhaps simply looks like a slice of oak wood that has had scallopes removed from its edge. And, how fierce does the Ruby Tiger sound compared to the (newly named) Rose Flounced Tabby?
Hopefully, tomorrow I will have a new collection to share with a whole new range of names. Brian just pointed out that there are about 2800 species of moth in the UK and he reckons he could at one time ID about 1000. He also adds rather ominously that there are probably 700 species in your back garden. This is mothology lark is certainly something of a deep rabbit hole. At least with stamp collecting the critters sit still and don’t fly away.
Mid-July 2018, I set a trap, a Robinson moth trap, constructed by my friend Rob. He’d had lots of success capturing, photographing and ultimately releasing hundreds of different species of moth when his children were young around 2006. We got quite a haul of moths on a trial run in his garden, including an enormous Poplar Hawk, Rustic, Brown-tail, Buff Ermine, Burnished Brass, and many others, here’s an open gallery of some of the moths we saw. It was seeing a Copper Underwing on our conservatory wall that triggered me to borrow the trap from Rob.
Robinson moth trap with actinic light
Another friend, erstwhile moth expert, Brian, named some Rob and I hadn’t put a name to and highlighted the taxonomic discrepancies in a couple to which we (I) had assigned an incorrect monicker or where there is ambiguity without dissection or additional knowledge, examination.
The first night with the trap in my back garden brought high diversity, but mostly very small moths and one or two special (to me as a novice moth lover) species: Burnished Brass (Diachrysia chrysitis), Rose-flounced Tabby (Endotricha flammealis), Yponomeuta sp., The Dun-bar (Cosmia trapezina), Ruby Tiger (Phragmatobia fuliginosa), Cloaked Minor (Mesoligia furuncula)…
My very good friend Rob, former bigMouth chorister, cabinet maker, luthier, painter, photographer, and, as it turns out, amateur lepidopterist built himself a moth trap back in the mid-2000s to entertain his children.
You set the trap up to do its job overnight. It is basically a sealed wooden box full of egg trays, with a big funnel as a collector and an ultraviolet lamp above as an attractor. At night, the flying creatures are attracted to the lamp, find themselves perambulating down the funnel and into the box, and roosting in the egg trays.
There they will happily stay until dawn, when the amateur lepidopterist will pay a visit to see what lurks within, setting them all free again after a few observations are made and photos taken, preferably into undergrowth and bushes some distance away from the trapping site. You can see some of the snaps I took at Rob’s early this morning in a Facebook gallery entitled Mothley Crew, hopefully I will have more species to display tomorrow.
I paid Rob a visit early this morning, by invitation, to see what kind of haul he might have had on a sultry July night. Daytime temperatures have been 30 degrees Celsius plus and nothing lower than about 25 at night. There were plenty of flies and beetles in the trap and no smaller number of moths. Moths of all sizes from tiny little specimens, through White and Buff Ermines, and Large Yellow Underwings 20 millimetres or so from antennae to tail, and at least one much bigger Poplar Hawk Moth.
I snapped a few close-ups with my phone camera while Rob set them free into his garden shrubberies to fly another night or be snaffled up by Pipistrelle Bats. It seemed rather churlish not to offer to borrow the trap to see what kind of mothley crew we might have in our back garden and save a few from the local bats, just for a night. So, almost midday, the trap is set, just need to wait until dark, switch on the lamp, and spend an excitedly restless night dreaming of Elephant Hawk Moths, Netted Carpets, Brimstones, and Angle Shades.
Incidentally, that lamp…it looks like a U-shaped fluorescent tube about 300 mm in length. It’s labelled as an “actinic lamp”. Actinic from the Greek for a ray or beam and pertaining to photography and other areas where light is important. A non-actinic light, such as a red light used in a photography dark room, will not fog photographic film and triggers no photobiological nor photochemical reactions. An actinic light, as used in Rob’s homemade Robinson-type moth trap is the opposite. It’s a full-on bright, white light that reaches deeper into the high-energy blue end of the visible spectrum and is thus highly visible to light-seeking invertebrates.
In terms of etymology, chemist readers will recall the radioactive (beta emitting) element actinium and its relatives the actinides, which will fog photographic film, and much more besides…
I have attempted to categorise and separate out the science, snaps, songs, and birds posts, so that you can focus on just one subject, there is lots of overlap. For example in a post about research into a particular species of bird where I have illustrated it using my own photos or in a song with lyrics inspired by a scientific principle or discovery, again where I may have illustrated the post with my photos (birds or otherwise). Hope it’s useful…
Gulls just want to have fun, A gull that can’t say no, Only gulls allowed, The it gull…
A real gull’s gull, Funny gull, Party gull, A daddy’s gull, One of the gulls, Good gull, Cover gull, Gull Friday, The gull next door, Couldn’t happen to a nicer gull…
Little gull’s room, That’s my gull, Working gull, Poor little rich gull, Big gull’s blouse, Call gull, Atta gull, What’s a gull supposed to do?, Guys and gulls…
A slip of a gull, Big gull pants, Old gull, Gull problems, Gull’s time of the month…
Poster gull, Page-three gull, Blue-eyed gull, Glamour gull, Same as the next gull…
Gulls’ night in, What are little gulls made of? Any other gull, Night out with the gulls…
More gulls and other birds and more in my Isles of Scilly gallery on Flickr. There are also my more serious blog posts about IOS with photos.
We went on a pelagic trip in the Isles of Scilly with Sapphire skipper Joe Pender, departing Hugh Town harbour, St Mary’s Island on 9th July 2018 at about 5pm. Within seconds we were being tailed by dozens of Herring Gull.
Engines were cut about an hour out to sea and the anglers aboard began flicking their rods to catch mackerel, which they did, a dozen or so quite quickly. Then the fishing for Blue Shark (Prionace glauca) began. An 83-year old angler hauled in the first (with a little assistance from crew and fellow anglers to get lines around and from under the boat). The catch was a 2.3 metre specimen, it was photographed, scientifically tagged*, and returned to the waves largely unscathed, but perhaps a little confused. I must admit, you could almost see the fear in its eyes while they were doing the weights and measures and shoving the tag under its skin!
Blue Shark, Prionace glauca
The older birdwatchers aboard jeered some of the subsequent efforts. But, by the end of the fishing it was a draw, 6 landed, 6 that got away.
Anyway, the birdwatching, was not quite the numbers game we had hoped for, but aside from the dozens of Herring Gull, we saw lots of Gannet, many over the boat and a distant flock diving on a patch of water where dolphins were also feeding. We had a few Fulmar and about the same number of Manx Shearwater (aka Manks Puffins).
The skipper called out another bird as it crossed our stern and I snapped at it as quickly as I could. I didn’t catch what it was at the time, I thought I heard him shout “Manxie!”. But, back home and on dryland with my laptop I could see it was a Skua that I’d photographed. The Facebook bird ID group called it out – it’s a Bonxie – a Great Skua (Stercorarius skua). Bonxie is a Shetland name for the bird probably a word of Norse origin. Skuas are piratical birds, they will steal food from other birds. But, they’re also predatory, and the Great Skua is capable of killing a kittiwake. Stuart Keenan on that Bird ID group tells me he’s seen one in Wester Ross kill and eat a first-year Great Black-backed Gull! In the same Facebook thread, Mike Honeyman told me that the Bonxies used to have a fairly good crack at the warden team on Fetlar. “We were suitably nervous in their vicinity!” he writes.
So, the Great Skua, a lifer for me, even if I didn’t get a decent shot. I wasn’t quick enough to get a focus lock on this bird as it crossed the stern of our moving boat, when the skipper shouted. The subsequent photos were reasonably sharp as it flew away but underexposed against the bright evening sky as, again, I wasn’t quite quick enough to adjust.
*UPDATE: 2024. The scientific work is important even if a few sharks have to be hauled from the water to be tagged.
The Mediterranean Blue Shark, a species critical to the marine ecosystem, is facing the threat of extinction due to overfishing and a lack of proper conservation efforts. A 2024 study explored the genetic differences between specimens in the Mediterranean Sea and the Northeast Atlantic Ocean to understand if they are separate populations. The results showed subtle genetic differences, suggesting that the Mediterranean sharks are largely isolated from Atlantic populations. This separation means they rely on local populations for survival, with limited new sharks coming from the Atlantic.
This has important implications for conservation. Current management often treats Blue Sharks as a single population, but this overlooks the unique risks facing the Mediterranean sharks. Overfishing in this region could push them closer to extinction, especially since they reproduce slowly and are not being replenished from elsewhere. Protecting these sharks requires more targeted conservation strategies and international cooperation.
This research is vital not only for blue sharks but for understanding how fishing and environmental changes affect marine ecosystems as a whole. Safeguarding such apex predators is essential for maintaining the balance of marine life.
I don’t know if Pender’s tags are specifically part of the data for this particular study, but they do feed into the bigger picture of Blue Shark movements in the Atlantic.
The Manx Shearwater is a medium-sized shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae, photo immediately below. The scientific name of this species is Puffinus puffinus. It’s a tautonym, which means the name repeats to indicate this species is the “type” for the family.
But, you’re perhaps wondering why isn’t it the Atlantic Puffin with its colourful beak the bird that gets to be called the “type” of the family instead of this largely black and white seabird. Well, the answer lies in the fact that Manx shearwaters were known as Manks Puffins in the 17th century. The word puffin has an Anglo-Norman etymology (in Middle English it’s pophyn) and it means “the cured carcasses of nestling shearwaters”, a delicacy at one time. So, back when animals were being given their scientific names and the science of taxonomy and its rules and regulations first being drafted by Carl Linnaeus, the Manx Puffin was the type and was given the appropriate name – Puffinus puffinus.
It is thought that the bird we commonly call the Atlantic Puffin today (Fratercula arctica) got its common name much later, perhaps simply because it has nesting habits similar to the Manx Shearwater.
We recently visited the Isles of Scilly (IOS), spent a few days island hopping from St Mary’s to Tresco, St Agnes and Gugh, St Martin’s, the Western Isles and Bishop Rock Lighthouse and the Eastern Isles. Given that Manx Shearwaters have started breeding here again we were hoping to see quite a few. I think in total we probably saw 20-30 over the course of the week whereas others had seen vast flocks of 1500-2000 the week before. Same applied to the Atlantic Puffins…we were there just a little bit too late in the season.
Meanwhile, we did take an evening pelagic (open-water) trip on a shark-fishing/bird-watching boat. The focus was very much the sharks for the fishermen at least.
The sea anglers caught six (another six got away). The first and largest was 2.3m from tip of its nose to the tip of its tale and was caught by an 83-year old gent with only a little assistance from crew and fellow anglers. All the sharks were scientifically tagged and returned to the water alive and flicking.
Our hope was to see a lot of Manx Shearwaters, like I said. I think we saw, at most three or four on that trip. We did see a lot of Gannets, Herring Gulls, several Fulmars, and a Great Skua.
However, perhaps a highlight was the appearance of a school of short-beaked dolphins (pictured below) accompanied by some bottle-nosed dolphins as we headed back to St Mary’s at sunset. The photo below is of Short Beaks skimming alongside our ferry back to the mainland rather than the low-light snaps I got of the various dolphins on the evening pelagic.
I’ve shared a gallery of my best bird photos from our IOS trip via a public link on Facebook and you can see the top 10% of all of our photos from the trip on Flickr.
There are lots of birds in the Isles of Scilly, although unfortunately, we were at the tail-end of the Puffin season. The islands had had good weather and Easterly winds for a while, which meant less marine bird activity and lower numbers. We saw Manx Shearwaters by the handful as opposed to flocks of 1500-2000 on pelagic trips the week before. Lots of Gannet meant dolphins: Bottlenosed and Common Dolphins on a couple of trips, and lots of seals on another. Oh, and a lone Red Squirrel, just to give the mammals a mention. We also saw six Blue Sharks being caught on our pelagic trip, measured, and scientifically tagged to be returned to the sea a little shaken but otherwise unharmed.
But, on the plus side, it meant no rain, blue skies and warm, sunny days. It was like being in The Caribbean.
We also added a few new species to the bird gallery on this trip: Manx Shearwater, Greenshank, Rock Pipit, Carrion Crow. Various juveniles: Dunnock, Linnet, Lapwing, Barn Swallow, and others. And, of course quite a few we had seen and photographed before, but in new locations: Puffin, Guillemot, Fulmar, Razorbill, Gannet, Great Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Shelduck, Oystercatcher, Swallows, Wren, Reed Warbler, Stone Chat, Meadow Pipit, Peregrine. There were more House Sparrow here than anywhere we have ever visited but only the occasional Chaffinch, Greenfinch, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Song Thrush, Blackbird, Collared Dove, and other fairly common town and country birds.
Interestingly, someone told us on our island-hopping travels that Robins are rarely seen on the IoS, we saw at least four. Black-headed Gulls only rarely made an appearance. Birds we did NOT see at all that we normally see everywhere else in the UK: Buzzard, Kestrel, Jackdaw, Rook, Wood Pigeon, etc.
Our full IoS gallery of Birds, Boats, Mammals, and More is on Flickr and includes photos from Mr & Mrs Sciencebase. There’s also a bird-specific gallery on my Facebook, which should be visible to all visitors.
I bought a sack of black sunflower hearts to restock the garden bird feeders instead of that wasteful mixed seed most of which the small birds discard and the Woodpigeons and our labrador hoover up. It seems the Great Tit (Parus major) and the Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) are quite partial to these. They need some degree of patience to eat them given that the tasty seed is contained within an edible husk. This deters some less patient birds. I’ve not seen Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) tucking into these seeds on the feeders, for instance. They much prefer to snaffle suet balls and mixed dehusked seed mix.
Eating such seeds comes with the risk of greater exposure to predator threat while the bird cracks the seed open. The Great Tits seem to quickly duck in and out, grabbing a seed and then darting back into the foliage to presumably break it open and eat it. A female Greenfinch (Chloris chloris) didn’t seem perturbed, standing her ground (well, her perch) while she opened it to eat.
