Garden moths - Friday July 19

The trap went out last night. A full moon and depressed temperatures led to a capture of just 68 moths, but they did include three new ones for the garden and several new for the year.

The new ones were; Maple Pug, Dingy Footman, and Common White Wave, the former being a fairly locally distributed species, and tricky enough that I decided to email a photo to JS and to David Brown to make  sure I was correct. David subsequently gave it the thumbs up.

Maple Pug

The key features of this rather nondescript little moth are its small size (hence the ruler) and a wiggly white subterminal line at the top end of the upper wing.

Dingy Footman

Common White Wave

JS may be away as I haven't heard from him, but I am pretty sure that the distinctive shape of the Dingy Footman and the straight outer cross line of the Common White Wave are enough to confirm the identifications.

New for the year were the micros Celypha striana, and Crassa unitella, and the macros Marbled Beauty, and Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing.

One micro is currently unidentified (some kind of Pyrallid), two flew off without me working out what they were, and most annoyingly a Thorn sp was either Early Thorn or Lunar Thorn, it flew off into the rain as soon as I turned over the egg box it was in.

It started raining within about an hour of daybreak, so I hoisted a large parasol over the table the trap was on, and thus kept my moths dry and, hopefully, happy until they flew off this evening.