The Moths of Summer

by Alan Cole · Thursday, July 11th, 2013

Day 6 of Summer is here and after collecting strawberries from the garden it was time to inspect the moth trap that I’d put out last night.

Fresh Strawberries from the Garden

It’s been a while since we did any moth-trapping but there was quite a haul. Conditions were perfect for the moths, temperatures only dropped to 14°C and winds were light. Trouble is I think I’d forgotten the names of many of them so the identification process took a while. Morgan helped out a bit and I tried to photograph as many of them as I could. I forgot to take photos of some of the more common ones and one or two got away before I could get a decent photo of them, but here’s the full list and photos of those I did get.

6x Oligia sp.
1x V-Pug
23x Flame
1x Small Elephant Hawkmoth
2x Shuttle-shaped Dart
10x Heart and Dart
11x Dark Arches
1x Elephant Hawkmoth
1x Archer’s Dart
4x Bright-line Brown-eye
1x White-line Dart
8x Flame Shoulder
1x White Ermine
1x Lesser Cream Wave
4x Large Yellow Underwing
1x Common Rustic / Lesser Common Rustic agg.
1x Smoky Wainscot
1x Striped Wainscot
1x Pug
1x Brown Rustic
2x Double Square-spot
1x Clay
1x Knot Grass
1x Mottled Rustic
1x Ebulea crocealis

: Small Elephant Hawkmoth

: Bright-Line Brown-Eye

: Brown Rustic

: Archer’s Dart

: Clay

: Knot Grass

: Dark Arches

: Double Square-spot

: Elephant Hawkmoth

: Heart and Dart

: Mottled Rustic

: Oligia sp.

: Pug

: White Ermine

: Ebulea crocealis

: Smoky Wainscot

: Striped Wainscot

: V-Pug

: Lesser Cream Wave

The Hawkmoths are spectacular as ever, but the Archer’s Dart is still one of my favourites. The Lesser Cream Wave and V-Pug are nice too and the Ebulea crocealis is a new garden record and a micro so I don’t normally record them but it looked nice.

Emily says:

Sunday, July 14th, 2013 at 5:41 am

The Small Elephant Hawkmoth is gorgeous! I had no idea such pretty moths lived in the UK, I only ever see the small tiny silvery ones in fields.

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