Moth night

As it's moth night over the next three days, we set up the moth trap last night. We caught well over 100 moths, plus a few that made a dash for it as soon as we lifted the lid. Best of all we caught two Elephant Hawk Moths!  Later in the summer, we'll have to keep an eye out for some caterpillars eating the Fuschia. We also got a Buff Tip and a few other new moths that we hadn't caught before.

2 Elephant Hawk Moths

Buff Tip

Brownline Bright Eye



Dark Arches

Common Footman

Common Wainscot

We set the trail camera up to film the moth trap (Bug Mad Girl's idea - I think she wanted to photograph the moths going into the trap!) We found a giant furry creature in the garden (most likely the white cat we've seen before on the trail camera).

We also caught lots of clever birds sitting on the trap, picking off the moths that were on the outside. I think they recognize the box now. We even caught naughty Robbie with a moth in his mouth!

I've entered our results onto the Moth Night website and they were:

• 2 Elephant Hawk moths
• 1 Buff Tip
• 2 Small Magpies
• 2 Large Yellow Underwings
• 1 Garden Carpet
• 1 Mother of Pearl
• 2 Common Footman
• 2 Common Wainscot
• 1 Swallowtail Moth
• 1 Dark Arches
• 1 Riband Wave
• 8 Brownline Bright Eye
• 7 Hebrew Character
• 4 Dot Moths
• 25 Heart and Dart
• 50+ other small brown moths that I couldn't identify