Category: Insects

The Common-Clay

obscure moth

As you can see from this photograph taken in the bug box, this is a small moth, just 16 or 17 millimetres long.
As you can see from this photograph taken in the bug box, this is a small moth, just 16 or 17 millimetres long.

I’VE FOUND some striking looking moths in the light trap in recent weeks but I thought that it was time to turn my attention to the commoner but obscure species that I generally ignore.

obscure mothI’ve been thinking of this moth as a ‘clay’, as it resembles a variable little moth called the ingrailed clay but there are probably a dozen other noctuid moths in the field guide that are possibilities.

Drawing it from one of the photographs I took is my attempt to take in its markings; most prominent of which, or should I say the least obscure, are the kidney-shaped marking and the adjacent oval on each of its forewings but most noctuid moths have these.

As usual, any suggestions as to its identity would be very welcome.

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Gothic

gothicgothicTHE FIRST THING that struck me when I saw this moth in the light trap was the tracery on its wings. Now that I know it is the gothic, Naenia typica, I can see that it resembles the patterns found in the stained glass windows of gothic cathedrals. Its relative the Bordered Gothic dispenses with the pointed tops to the arches and has more of an Art Nouveau look, as if it had been designed by Aubrey Beardsley rather than Hugh of Lincoln or Bram Stoker.

The larvae feed on a range of wild and cultivated plants including willowherb, cleavers, comfrey and sallow.

Mother of Pearl

mother of pearl

The photograph that I made my pencil and watercolour sketch from. This was easier than squinting into the bug box, which is how I drew the pen and watercolour sketches.
The photograph that I made my pencil and watercolour sketch from. This was easier than squinting into the bug box, which is how I drew the smaller sketches.

I KEPT THINKING of the patterns on sea-shells as I drew this moth, the mother of pearl, Pleuroptya ruralis. At 15-17 mm, three-quarters of an inch, it’s no midget but it’s classified as a micro-moth, one of the Crambidae, a group which also includes grass-moths, china-marks and the small magpie.

mother of pearl

You might disturb the mother of pearl in daylight in a nettle patch. Its green larva rolls a nettle leaf for protection. Its larvae will also feed on elms.

Caught in the moth trap 21-22 July.

Early Thorn

Drawn from my own photograph, which can be easier than peering into a bug box.
Drawn from my own photograph, which can be easier than peering into a bug box.

AT FIRST GLANCE you might think ‘butterfly’ as the Early Thorn, Selenia dentaria, is the only Thorn moth to hold its wings up in butterfly fashion.

You might be thinking that late July doesn’t qualify as ‘Early’ but this is a female of the second generation, which  usually has a larger tawny orange patch on its underwing than the February to May generation.

As the name suggests, she might well be looking for a blackthorn or hawthorn to lay her eggs on, there are plenty in the immediate vicinity, but the larvae will also feed on birch, alder, honeysuckle, sallow or bog-myrtle. They’re common in a wide variety of habitats including gardens, hedges and woods so they should feel at home here.

Moth-trapping

moth trapTHIS IS the moth trap that I’ve been using. It’s built from a design that you can find in the Anglian Lepidopterist Supplies Beginners Guide to Moth Trapping, which is available as a PDF from the Anglian Lepidopterist Supplies website. It slots together so it’s easy to dismantle for storage.

blacklightI bought the black light UV bulb in September, intending to have the trap ready for the moths of early autumn but by Christmas I still hadn’t made a start on it so I’m grateful to my friend David Stubbs of Solway Dory who made this for me in his workshop.

He made one modification to the design which isn’t essential but which I’ve found helpful; the original design is apparently open to the ground so he added a plywood base that rests on batons of 1×1 inch timber glued around the bottom edges of the trap. This is useful on a summer morning when I need to move the trap into the shade to deal with later.

A further improvement that I have in mind: I’m checking in charity shops to see if I can find a suitable heatproof glass container, such as a large cafetière, to cover the bulb so that if there’s a shower during the night it will be protected.

I didn’t want to run the cable out of a window so I had an outdoor electrical socket with a circuit breaker fitted on the back wall of the house, which is a useful thing to have anyway.

Mercury Vapour or UV?

A couple of friends who’ve had experience of moth-trapping recommended that I start with a UV lamp rather than the more powerful mercury vapour. Apart from potentially annoying the neighbours in a back garden location like mine, the mercury vapour brings in so many moths from such a wide area that it can be daunting for the beginner to deal with quantity and variety of species caught.

My friend Tim Freed who does moth surveys sometimes runs three traps simultaneously but he stops up all night going from one to the other logging the catch.

I’m happier to be dealing with much smaller samples of the local moth population but I hope that I’ll be able to keep this up through the seasons and gradually get an impression of the bigger picture.

I’ve got a number of moth books but I think the essentials are Field Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland by Paul Waring and Martin Townsend and Field Guide to the Micro Moths of Great Britain and Ireland by Phil Sterling and Mark Parsons. Both are illustrated by Richard Lewington.

Moths are so variable that its helpful to check out other books and to Google the species and conjure up dozens of images of it.

Little Brown Moths

dropping mothTHIS SMALL moth, black arches, appears to be disguised as a bird dropping or a dried crust of lichen. Like most moths, it holds itself flat against the surface that it is resting on so that its outline would blend seamlessly with a similar background.

old leaf moth

oldleaf2

The large yellow underwing seems to have gone to a lot of effort in the design of its veins, tufts, random blemishes and high ‘collar’ to give itself a resemblance to a dry, dead leaf. It sat tight the whole time that I was drawing it so I didn’t get to see it flash its hindwings.

restless

A restless little moth flies around in the container that I’ve put it in. It looks like a smaller, less distinct version of the double square-spot moths that often turn up in the moth trap.

indistinct2
The least distinct of this batch of moths.

miniwave

Its slightly smaller companion in the container isn’t so restless. This little moth has a double-wave pattern on its wings.

The nearest thing that I can see in the book in a pine processionary but we’re nearer to broadleaved woodland so I think that is unlikely.

indistinct

Finally another small moth and the least distinct in this batch. Whenever a moth like this turns up I’m tempted to call it an ingrailed clay as that species is so varied in size and pattern, but there are a lot of similar looking moths. It’s evidently a design classic, one that ensures the moth’s survival.

Also caught in the trap this morning: peppered moth (light form as always), flame, heart and dart, double square-spot, shoulder-striped wainscot and a second large yellow underwing which did show its colourful hindwings as it flew away.

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Pebble Prominent

pebble prominentAMONGST THE usual suspects – peppered, ‘clay’, footman, heart and dart – rounded up in the moth trap this morning there’s a new and, as a change from all those little brown jobs, a suitably distinctive looking moth. I sketch it several times to take in the appearance of it.

pebble prominentThose swirls at the ends of its forewings remind me of knots in wood. It’s the pebble prominent, Notodonta ziczac, the ‘pebble’ being the light brown area rather than the swirl. It’s a common and widespread moth of mature woodland, hedges and gardens; habitats that Coxley Valley has a plentiful supply of.

 

Moth of the Day

mothsANOTHER GOOD NIGHT for moths but a busy day for me so these sketches are as far as I got with identifying some of the catch.

beetleThe most striking insect this morning was this black beetle which was well over an inch long but seemed bigger. I’d love to have time to draw these creatures but I knew that I’d have to be quick to get even this snapshot because I’d seen one just like it in the trap first thing yesterday morning and by the time I’d had breakfast and come out to sort through the catch it had disappeared. Presumably it had managed to clamber out through the narrow opening.

dor beetle

A slightly better record of another beetle that had blundered into the trap yesterday but which was still there when I emptied the trap because it still had last night’s takeaway with it; a fragment of earthworm. As the trap is boxed in, I assume that it had been flying with it. This is a – I guess – a rose chafer or a close relative of it.

It would normally keep its wings neatly folded beneath its elytra (wing-cases, that are modified forewings). In the rose chafer these have a coppery red sheen when seen from certain angles.

Burnished Brass

burnished brassThe burnished brass, Diachhrysia chrysitis, is a moth found ‘almost everywhere’ but typically in gardens and in hedges and on rough ground. One of its foodplants is nettle, so it should feel at home in our garden.

I’d describe its background colour as pale straw with perhaps the slightest tint of lime. burnished brassThe front of the head is ginger in contrast to the mottled brown of its other markings. By breaking up the colour like this and breaking up its shape with tufts and a small cockscomb this moth could pass itself off as a broken off piece of plant debris.

Playing dead, as it helpfully remained while I drew this, it would be perfectly disguised amongst summer leaf litter.

Small Magpie

small magpie mothmagpie mothLike the burnished brass, the small magpie, Eurrhypara hortulata, a micro-moth that is 12mm long with a 2cm wingspan, is found in hedges and in gardens. Its larvae will also feed on nettles.

Any Suggestions?

unknown moth

unknown mothAs usual there were a couple of less distinctive moths in the moth-trap that I’ve been unable to identify. Knowing how variable moths can be in size and colour left me struggling to match this moth with any particular species in the book. It’s tempting to lump puzzlers this as all being variations of that most typical of little brown moths, the uncertain.

But having said that it could in fact be the architypical little grey moth, the imaginatively named grey.

small mothsmall mothJust because I think I won’t be able to identify a moth doesn’t mean that I have to ignore it. This dark little moth with a thin white crescent was about 1cm long.

Eyed Hawk

eyedhawk
This photograph was taken beneath a red parasol, which has given a red cast to the moth.

IT SEEMS TO BE the rule with moth-trapping that you get one or two spectacular species along with 3 or 4 really obscure puzzlers, the moth equivalent of the birdwatcher’s ‘little brown jobs’. Today’s star was undoubtably this new species for our garden the eyed hawkmoth.

It was restless, repeatedly trying to whirr out through the plastic walls of its bug box prison so I sketched it quickly, took a few photographs when it occasionally paused for a break then released it in what I thought would be a safe and shady in the corner by the shed. But instead of heading for cover it zoomed up in the air and was immediately spotted by a female sparrow who chased it and seemed to make brief contact with it. Fortunately it escaped into the dense foliage of the crab apple and the sparrow touched down on the path near the rhubarb. I checked and she definitely didn’t have a large moth in her beak.

Perhaps she was recovering from the shock of seeing those staring eyes suddenly appear as the moth flew away.

moth sketchesAnd the more obscure species:

  1. A silver ground carpet, which is getting to be a regular in our catch
  2. A confused, yes there really is a moth called the confused, although at first I guessed this was a variation of the common rustic. That just shows how confusing it is.
  3. confusedAn ingrailed clay. I’ve looked it up and I can’t find a definition of ‘ingrail’ but it is clay coloured. Perhaps you could say it looked as if it has been engraved with stippled markings and lines.
  4. A sooty moth

This is the only shot that I managed to get of the confused, as it rested in the bug box.

Ingrailed Clay

ingrailed clay

ingrailed clay

I did a bit better with the ingrailed clay because it hung around on the patio table as Barbara and I riffled through the field guides checking through a bewildering  number of clay-coloured moths. But I’m confident that this is an ingrailed because I’ve been able to Google it and helpfully there are plenty of photographs of this variable moth, one or two of them just like ours.

sooty moth

Finally here’s the sooty moth resting on my sketchbook. I haven’t even attempted to identify this one!