the lackey

I'm excited to announce that this mornings moth trap bounty was the best my dads garden has seen so far. I've been trapping here as regularly as I can but numbers have rarely hit double figures. 'Trapping' exploits the propensity of night-flying moths to fly to light. A moth trap is essentially a box (full of egg boxes for resting) fitted with a funnel (to guide them into the box), a light (to lure them in) and sometimes a rain guard (to avoid any exploding bulbs and to keep the box nice and dry for its inhabitants). They can be placed anywhere you fancy if you have a battery pack, but I'm limited to needing a mains supply, so my dads garden it was!

This morning 15 individuals of 11 species were nestled down in the nooks and crannies of an array of jumbled egg boxes, waiting patiently to be carefully identified and released back into the wilds. You might think that this grand total sounds completely unimpressive, and you'd be right. This is actually a teeny amount, and to put this into perspective, my friend in Portugal is currently trapping upwards of 500 individuals a night.

But, we must accept what life throws at us and I will therefore continue to be pleased with my pitiful 11 (beautiful) moths. My favourite of the bunch was the 'Lackey'. A Lackey is a lovely little moth with a hairy thorax and horizontal stripes. The caterpillar is an awesome mix of bright turquoise and copper orange stripes, and can be found munching on shrubs and broad-leaf trees such as hawthorn and blackthorn.

Also within the trap were 2 Heart & Clubs, 3 Heart & Darts, 2 Uncertains, a Clay and a carpet that flew off before being identified. I'm sure you'll agree there are some great moth names here; 'Uncertain' is my personal favourite. A quick flick through my moth guide highlights some of the best names out there - Oblique carpet, Many-lined (yes, this moth has many lines on its wings...), Ruddy Highflyer, Pimpinel Pug, Scarce Chocolate-tip, to name just a few.

Next I needed to consult the dreaded micro-moth book. Moths can generally be split into two categories (they can actually be split into MANY categories/families) but for the sake of selecting an appropriate guide book, they are split into macro-moths (generally larger, 874 sp. in the UK) and micro-moths (generally smaller - 1626 sp. in the UK). The micro-moth book is actually great, but micro's are generally tricky little things that I find nearly impossible on most occasions to identify. Despite this I still like the challenge of giving it a go. Some of the catch were easy ones - they in fact look more like macro's than micros - a bee moth and Hypsophgia glaucinalis. Others were not so simple and I only managed possible ID's to family or genus - a Crambidae (possible pediasia), some kind of torticidae and another crambidae of some kind, image below! Any ideas let me know!!

An unidentified micro-moth. Any ideas anyone?!