Science – Page 30 – David Bradley

How to identify British Moths

Sean Foote is a marvel. Over on Twitter he responds to tagged tweets from people who have photographed a UK moth or two and would like to know what species of moth they have. I’ve used his services on numerous occasions often to confirm an identification, but more often when I simply didn’t have a clue as a relative n00B moth-er. It’s an entirely free service although users can “buy him a coffee” here as a mark of appreciation.

He keeps records, as you would, and publishes details of the most requested identifications, he’s also got a nice Top 100 with tips on how to identify some of the more ambiguous Lepidoptera. I’ve compiled a list of the Top 40 here. Don’t forget to leave a tip for him if you find them useful.

1. Square-spot Rustic. 393 queries
2. Common Rustic agg. 292 queries
3. Uncertain/Rustic. 279 queries
4. Large Yellow Underwing. 270 queries
5. Double-striped Pug. 258 queries.
6. Common Pug. 254 queries
7. Marbled Minor agg. 251 queries
8. Willow Beauty. 247 queries
9. Common Marbled Carpet. 213 queries
10. Flounced Rustic. 185 queries
11. Bee Moth. 180 queries
12. Dark Arches. 178 queries
13. Turnip. 168 queries
14. Chrysoteuchia culmella. 167 queries
15. Light Brown Apple Moth. 166 queries
16. Mottled Rustic. 157 queries
17. Celypha lacunana.Â 154 queries
18. Riband Wave. 150 queries
19. Eudonia lacustrata. 149 queries
20. Clouded Drab. 148 queries
21. Vine’s Rustic. 147 queries
22. Small Dusty Wave. 136 queries
23. Cnephasia sp. 134 queries
24. Rustic Shoulder-knot. 132 queries
25. Pale Mottled Willow. 127 queries
26. Smoky Wainscot. 124 queries
27. Clay. 124 queries
28. Lesser Yellow Underwing. 120 queries
29. Ingrailed Clay. 119 queries
30. Common Plume. 113 queries
31. Yellow Shell. 107 queries
32. Shuttle-shaped Dart. 106 queries
33. November Moth sp. 105 queries
34. Common Quaker. 103 queries
35. Cabbage Moth. 102 queries
36. Dusky Brocade. 98 queries
37. Brindled Pug. 98 queries
38. Scoparia ambigualis. 96 queries
39. The Nutmeg. 95 queries
40. Cloaked Minor. 94 queries

Hunstanton Fulmars

Recently, I mentioned the presence of an intriguing seabird spotted flying over our very land-locked Cambridgeshire village – the Northern Fulmar, Fulmarus glacialis. The nearest flock of nesting Fulmar is on the layered cliffs that back the North beach at Sunny Hunny, Hunstanton on the North Norfolk coast looking out across The Wash and beyond to St Botolph’s in in the Lincolnshire town of Boston.

Fulmars sit in the Petrels and Shearwaters group of birds, the Procellariiformes meaning the tubenoses. So-called because along the crest of their bill they have a tubular structure that encloses one or two nostrils. They might be confused with gulls but a closer view reveals them to be rather different and even at a distance their stiff-winged flight is a giveaway.

Sandwich Tern taking a dive at Hunstanton, one of dozens

Lots of Swifts over the cliffs, making flying pecks at the limestone

Wreck of the trawler The Sheraton (launched 1907) at Hunstanton…the vessel was a WWII patrol vessel, ultimately wrecked in 1947.

Fruit of The Tall Sock Destroyer

This unassuming plant, flowers and fruit in the photo, which just happens to be growing locally along the edge of a sugarbeet field, is actually an endangered species on the “red” list…it’s a type of wild carrot that goes by the scientific name of Torilis arvensis, but you can call it The Tall Sock Destroyer*

*It’s also known as Spreading Hedgeparsley, which sounds more like a skin disorder people who run through amber fields of grain might get rather than the worst-ever Marvel comic superhero…

Its fruits have sticky little purple barbs that under normal circumstances cling on to the wool of passing sheep and the fur of other animals and spread the seed wherever those animals might graze. In times of herbicide use and less brazen shepherding, the plant has not thrived and is very much endangered, so it’s lovely to know that it’s growing on the outskirts of our fen edge village in Cambridgeshire. NB This is only the second time I’ve “twitched” a plant.

Sciencebase in the time of Covid

Up front: Nothing much has changed for my working practices since the coronavirus pandemic struck and we were all put into varying degrees of lockdown and social distancing. I’ve carried on with regular clients covering science news across a wide range of disciplines for the outlets that have all been mentioned here on numerous occasions over the last 25 years of this website…

As a household, we never did run out of loo roll nor any other essentials despite not stockpiling nor panic buying…

Lockdown did mean more “at home” time, no choir nor band rehearsals, only in-the-house solo music creation and broadcasts and a couple of online collaborations which I’d done often enough in normal times long before the so-called new normal. My Lockdown EP is almost a mini-album now with eight tracks. As for everyone lots of interactions with friends, family, colleagues, and collaborators via video chat servers, which is entertaining enough but tiring on the eyes.

There were lots of garden-based and very local photographic and video opportunities: PondWatch, GardenWatch, even ShedWatch on Facebook and the expansion of Lepidopteral diversity in the garden as the spring turned to summer. Indeed, anything of biological could quickly become a major focus for a blog post and I quickly add photographic specimens to Instagram and Imaging Storm. Then, there’s AllotmentLife to be taken care of…

If you need to drill down into any of this stuff there is a whole category structure within the Sciencebase website that has evolved over the years:

Photography,Â Classic Chords, Chemistry, Social Media etc

Spreading Hedgeparsley, The Tall Sock Destroyer

There’s a growing list of wildflowers classed as endangered in The British Isles, among them Apparently, Spreading Hedge-parsley, also known as the Tall Sock Destroyer. A friend of mine, Pam, spotted some growing along a sugarbeet field margin on the north edge of our village. I had to “twitch” it, it seemed so exotic.

It’s a delicate-looking plant of the carrot family, I was not particularly worried about ruining my socks even if that vernacular name sounds like its the worse of the DC/Marvel superheroes. Identification has now been confirmed by the county recorder here in VC29. So, here’s one of my snapshots of Torilis arvensis.

Let’s hope its presence in our village persists. It’s a good sign if we are seeing endangered species growing again, it could be their comeback. It would be interesting to know whether this is a positive effect on the environment of reduced traffic and human activity because of the Covid-19 lockdown. Who knows? And, after we ease lockdown will things revert to their problematic pre-pandemic condition?

Torilis arvensis fruit bodies – Photo by Pamela Newman

The bristly seed-bearing fruits have slightly curved bristles which presumably readily stick to the wool of grazing sheep and the wool of hikers’ socks. Its decline is mostly blamed on agricultural herbicides but the lack of grazing sheep on intensively farmed arable land in modern agriculture may also be to blame for the seed not to be spread as widely as it once was.

Torilis arvensis flowers – Photo by Pamela Newman

Revenge of the toxic zucchini

Allotmenteers growing courgettes on their plot might be thankful if they stockpiled loo roll during the lockdown as it has emerged that a batch of zucchini seeds may contain seeds that will grow into toxic hybrid plants. The courgettes that grow from these hybrids contain high concentrations of a natural plant steroid called cucurbitacin E, which is very bitter but also acts as a potent laxative.

A warning about the putative lavatorial impact of these courgettes was first reported in June on the Brighton and Hove Allotment Federation web site. A lively discussion with frequent interruptions has grown on their site ever since. Members eventually worked out that the source of the seeds was Mr Fothergill’s. Within the last hour, the seed company has posted a recall notice on its website, Twitter and elsewhere:

URGENT PRODUCT RECALL NOTICE

It has come to our attention that a batch of our Courgette Zucchini seeds, labelled batch code "I", could contain a small number of seeds that could produce bitter-tasting fruits. This could be due to unusually high levels of cucurbitacins...

So, if you’re harvesting your courgettes (zucchini) this weekend check your seed packet batch number before starting that stirfry and don’t eat any courgette that tastes very bitter.

Interestingly, the toxic effects of cucurbitacin E exists in this family of plants to protect them from aphids, it acts as a natural insecticide. However, it may also have medical applications. The compound and its chemical cousins are being investigated for their anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and even anticancer properties. Of course, the pharmaceutical scientists will have to modify the structure to reduce the alimentary effects of the compound if it is to be a successful medicinal drug.

Silver-washed Fritillary butterfly

We visited Somerset in the summer of 2019 despite neither of us being fans of cider. We stayed on a beautiful part of the county’s north coast and did a lot of walking and visited a few nature reserves in the hope of seeing bird and insect species we might not commonly see in Cambridge where we live.

The Silver-washed Fritillary, Argynnis paphia, was one of the Lepidoptera I hoped to photograph. The species is widespread over the South West and Ireland (see here) and we saw several on flowers in the gardens of a cafe we visited after a five-mile walk. Spotted them only after I’d taken off my walking boots to cool my feet, so I was painfully tiptoeing over their gravel walkways to get a close-up.

Turns out the butterfly’s range extends all the way up to Cambridge, so we needn’t have gone that far if “ticking” that one species had been the sole aim of the trip. Yoga buddy Celia sent me a photo of paphia she had snapped in Hayley Wood Nature Reserve just west of Cambridge earlier this week.

So, on Friday I drove the 13 or so miles to this Wildlife Trust reserve with the aim of getting some new snaps of the species. I tramped up and down its empty footpaths for two or three hours. I passed one other person, a jogger, the whole time I was walking and then saw a Dad with his two teenage kids when I was at the top of the reserve’s observation tower.

Silver-washed Fritillary (M), rearview showing underside of wing

Anyway, I had seen very few birds, various butterflies (Comma, Meadow Brown, Peacock Red Admiral, Ringlet, Skipper, White (Large and Small) and having sat at the top of that tower was packing up my camera kit and readying to head home when I spotted a Hummingbird Hawk-moth flitting about among the fallen branches at the foot of the tower. This is the first one I’ve seen in this country since two of them were feeding on our Red Valerian in our back garden last September. Anyway, camera out, again…moth photographed.

Heading back to the car I took a 90-degree detour up a narrow and somewhat narrow footpath, which is when I spotted the first paphia of the day…and then another. They were too quick for me to raise my camera and get a shot, disappearing as they did into the overgrown foliage. I doubled back, maybe it’s a favoured spot, I thought…and thankfully it was indeed, another appeared, perched on a leaf, happy to be photographed at the requisite three metres of my 600mm zoom. Then another two.

Unless the butterflies had also doubled back, I hazard a guess that I saw five in this spot within the space of twenty minutes. I only ever saw two simultaneously, so it is possible there were actually between two and five.

The silver-washed fritillary butterfly has black spots on deep orange wings, and can be about 50 to 70 millimetres across when wings full open. The males are a little smaller and paler than the females. The name is derived from the character of the underside of the wing which is green with “artistic wash” silver streaks instead of the silver spots seen on other fritillaries. The adults feed on the nectar of bramble, thistles, and knapweeds, all of which were present lining the footpath.

Lots of Blackcaps and Wrens calling in the woods, but didn’t see much avian activity until I got back to the car, Whitethroat and a Red Kite overhead, quite low.

Lepidopteral Garden Safari – Part 96vii/d

Obviously, it’s not really Part 96vii/d (that’s just one of my perennial jokes). I think it’s probably the thirtieth or so post of moth garden safaris though…these are some of the varied species that made an appearance in the garden last night, drawn to the ultraviolet lure. My garden list is almost at 350 different species, there are some 1800 species in the British Isles overall, so still a long way to go and some species will never been seen in this little corner of England.

Three Privet Hawk-moths, UK’s largest moth

A dark, but not 100% melanic form of Peppered Moth

Nemophora metallica – the Brassy Longhorn

Again today, just seemed to be two Brassy Longhorns, Nemophora metallica, dining on the Field Scabious on the Cottenham Lode today. There are dining partners in several of the shots

Thankfully the people who have mowed the upper part of the bank (for some unknown reason) didn’t trim the scabious…

Lepidopteral update

Sciencebase readers who also partake of my Imaging Storm website will know already that the moth season has taken off. Night-flying leps are coming to the ultraviolet lure at a rate of knots now; 120 specimens of 60 different species last night (night of 23rd June 2020, logged on the morning of the 24th, many of them NFY (new for the year) and some even NFM (new for me, or as some moth-ers do ‘ave it, NFG, new for garden).

For those who like the stats there have been 20 species NFM in 2020 so far, most of them in the last week. I have no photographed almost 350 moths mostly in the garden, but one or two on field trips (holidays and camping trips) where the opportunity arose. 2000 specimens logged and many photographed so far in 2020.

Metallica are performing out on The Fens – The Brassy Longhorns, Nemophora metallica, feeding and presumably breeding on the Field Scabious growing on the west-facing bank of one of the local fenland drainage ditches known as the Cottenham Lode.