No eggs, loads of moths

Easter Sunday morning – as a boy I’d be dead keen on gobbling up the eggs, now that I’m a wee bit older I get no chocolate eggs in the morning but now I can rush down the stairs to see what moths are in the trap. By rush, I mean it took me quite a team to change the boy’s nappy, feed him, feed myself and eventually get out there. I know I’ve got to speed up this routine or they’ll cook in the summer.

Anyway there was a moth bonanza (for me anyway today). There were seven Early Greys, 2 Hebrew Characters (new species for me), a Muslin and a funny little moth I couldn’t find in the book that may have been a larger micro. The small moth flew off when I went to take it’s photo.

Above is the Hebrew Character from the side and from the front (doing it’s best impression of a mole). The moth gets it’s name from the markings on the wing, apparently just like on of the letters of a foreign alphabet. Don’t ask me to name the language – Jewish, Hebrew, Yiddish – I have no idea!

Whilst the above are next to useless for ID purposes, I’m enjoying taking some portrait style pictures of the moths. The Muslin is on the left, I think it’s the same fellow as last night, and one of the Early Greys is on the right.

After rummaging about on next to the moth trap before taking the moths off to the undergrowth I noticed this moth hiding on the brickwork next to the trap. I’m pretty sure it an Engrailed, please let me know if you think otherwise.

Early Grey 7

Hebrew Character 2

Muslin 1

Engrailed 1

Muslin Moth

After the previous evening’s dismal (and typical) moth trap catch of nil I had reasonably low hopes for last night’s haul (night of 3rd April). Luckily whilst the glass was half empty the moth trap was half full (well not quite but far from empty). After the Early Grey’s appearance the previous weekend another three of them turned up, a Chestnut appeared too and more interestingly, and a new species for me, the Muslin Moth.

My identification book reckoned that this should be around in May-June, but it also described it as being unmistakeable. I’d agree that it is pretty distinctive and checked to a book about Warwickshire moths and sometimes they do pop up earlier in the year, sometimes even late March.

Let me know if you think it’s something else!

A happy mother’s day

As noted in previous posts I’ve branched out into moths as well as butterflies, got hold of a moth trap and set out to catch some moths. Needless to say it’s not all that easy to catch moths at the end of winter. In fact I’d saw my first butterfly of the year, a peacock, a week before finally catching a moth.

And what a time to catch a moth, mother’s day… Perhaps the countryside had been stripped of flowers and the moths were looking for alternate places to visit. More likely it’s just the time of the year that they are starting to appear in gardens. Anyway I got my first moth of the year and it was a Chestnut.

From doing a bit of reading and from trial and error what I’ve learnt is that moths are a bit like fair weather golfers. They don’t like the cold and they don’t like the wind. It wasn’t until this weekend that the it’d been warm enough to tempt them out of hiding and that the wind was down enough not to blow them into the next county.

Happy mother’s day one and all!

Species count 2015: 1

How’d you catch a moth?

In summer months this doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. Simply read a book late at night with one of your windows open and your bound to have a few of the little blighters bashing into the bedside lamp. Funnily enough that wasn’t part of the course but as a strategy it works:

1. They tend to come out at night

2. They are generally attracted to lights

3. There’s lots of them in the summer

4.They’re partial to a bit of historical fiction

So what people do is they make traps using powerful light bulbs and boxes. Egg boxes are critical too (more on that later). The moths are attracted to the light, they then fall down holes and end up trapped in the box.

There a a few decisions about what type of trap to get:

• Mercury Vapour or Actinic (mercury vapour is much brighter, attracts more moths but might be unsuitable if overlooked by other people’s houses – really bright, but more moths!)
• Mains powered or not (where are you going to trap – out in the woods or in your back garden?)

I want to catch them in the back garden and I didn’t fancy falling out with the neighbours so I went for Actinic and mains powered.

• Next decision: make one or buy one. You can find designs on the internet, such as this one: link to moth trap design. So if you have reasonable DIY skills you can build one yourself. I priced it up and found it was probably only marginally more to buy a new one from Watkins & Doncaster.  I went for the Skinner type trap.

Oh and the egg boxes… It turns out that they are quite happy to sit on the egg boxes overnight as they like the rough cardboard texture. No luck if you get the cheaper plasticky egg boxes, they’re apparently no use. Presumably free range egg boxes will attract a better quality moth too.

As soon as I start catching them I’ll start posting details. There are lots of other ways to catch moths too. If I try them I’ll write about them too.