Moth night

We put the moth trap out last night and opened it up to find all sorts of new and exciting moths for the year. Best of all though, we had a good look round outside the moth trap (as some moths are attracted to the light, but don't go inside) and found 2 Buff Tips and 2 Pale Tussocks. Both are fairly large, interesting moths and they seem to make lovely rings as well!



Bug Mad rings

Buff Tips disguise themselves as a twig. Last year a moth laid lots of eggs in the moth trap, so we kept them until they hatched, them put them out on the Silver Birch tree in the garden. They were brilliant hairy caterpillars that ate their way through the best part of a branch of the tree. It would be brilliant if these two moths were from our garden caterpillars.

Buff Tip

Pale Tussock - with amazingly hairy legs!

In the moth trap we seemed have a bit of a green and white night. Who said all moths are small and brown? Some of these are really pretty and what amazing names they have!
 

Green Carpet



Yellow-Barred Brindle

White Ermine

Clouded Silver

Scorched Carpet

Small Phoenix - with it's bottom stuck up in the air!

Our total catch for the night was 2 Buff Tips, 2 Pale Tussocks, 1 Yellow-Barred Brindle, 1 White Ermine, 1 Treble Lines, 1 Green Carpet, 2 Shuttle Shaped Darts, 4 Common Swifts, 2 Clouded Silvers, 4 Flame Shoulders, 1 Scorched Carpet, 1 Small Phoenix and 2 Brimstone moths.
We also caught 2 Pinky Pointies, 1 Bird Poo Moth and 1 Copper Dart. We're not sure what these three are really called so made up our own names! They're all quite pretty though!


Pinky Pointy - really a Bee moth

Bird Poo moth - really a Chinese Character

Copper dart - really a Common Marbled Carpet

I sent our haul to the County Moth Recorder and he has kindly identified our 3 mystery moths as a micromoth called a Bee moth (that lives in bees nests), a Chinese Character and a Common Marbled Carpet.