Dark Bordered Beauty Moth

In July, I went to an event organised by Butterfly Conservation at the nearby Insh Marshes.  One of the things that I had always fancied doing was seeing what got caught in a moth trap. These are traps with a light that attracts moths and butterflies (and some other insects).  They are set up at night and then have to be emptied very early in the morning. So in the summer, you would have to be up around 4am to check them. Luckily for me, this event had  left the traps until later in the morning to be opened so it was not an early start.  The traps were much bigger than I expected.

The moth trap and some keen observers

Hats off to the volunteer who lugs these traps about (using a wheelbarrow) and checks them very early the next day.  The moths are drawn to the electric light  (powered by a mobile generator) and go into the base (blocked off by a teatowel in the photo) and rest in the egg boxes beneath until checked and released.

I know that some people are very keen on  identifying moths  but I have to confess that although it was interesting to see the whole thing once, it did not grab me!  There were a lot of brown ones.... (and I know, maybe lichens are not as fascinating to others as they are to me!)

The focus of the day was the exceedingly scarce Dark Bordered Beauty moth.  It only breeds in two places in Scotland and Insh Marshes is one of them. Its caterpillars eat Aspen leaves, but are very fussy as the Aspens have to be very young as it won't feed on more mature trees. As luck would have it, the last but one moth in the trap was a Dark Bordered beauty female.

And the last moth was the flashy Garden Tiger.

There is a breeding programme at the Highland Wildlife Park to produce more Dark Bordered Beauty moths by releasing caterpillars and adults at suitable sites. You can read about it here and see some much better pictures of the moth as well.

Another Lepidoptera

Just like buses, nothing new for a while and then two at once! I was tidying up the greenhouse, removing some tomato and cucumber leaves that had started to wither,  and when I had finished I noticed a surprise on my arm!

This is when it is handy to have a mobile phone as I could extract it from my pocket  and  take the photo one handed. I don't know much about moths but I do have a book of photos - The Collins Complete Guide to British Insects. I have found that if you don't have a photo of what you have seen, it is remarkably difficult to remember exactly what it looked like!

This is a good book for matching photos rather than using keys, but there are an awful lot of moths...

Starting at page 156, the photos go on until page 270, and further if you want to see the caterpillars.  Given my level of ID skills for moths, it was just a matter of scanning each page of photos until I saw something similar.  It was nearly a hundred pages later that I found it!

Angle Shades Moth - 3rd photo down on the right

It is an Angle Shades (Phlogophera meticulosa). Not one I have seen before but  apparently occurs all over Britain.