Tales of the Unexpected

Elephant Hawk Moth

As Summer is now in full swing, and Benno has been doing some excellent writing about his fishing adventures, I thought that it was only fair that I upheld my end of the bargain too and did some writing, so I'm going to tell you about what has happened this week with the moth trap.

When dad died, he wanted his moth books, moth trap and all that goes with it to go to Evelyn, my daughter. I found a note for her in his study on top of a pile of moth and butterfly books, and it ruined me for the whole day! 

He used to write a lot of little notes, that must be where I get it from!

We had some opportunity to use the trap earlier in the year and we caught a few moths, but nothing too spectacular, then life became pretty busy and extremely hot, and the moth trap remained in the shed for a while.

So, this week, when Evelyn asked to try again with the moth trap, I thought it was a very good idea. I had done some general reading about moths, and it seems that July is peak season for lots of them, and so on Friday evening Evelyn carefully stacked the egg boxes inside, set up the trap, turned on the bulb and went off to bed.

Sorting the moth trap before bedtime.

At 5am on Saturday morning (I know dad would do it at 3am, but he didn’t need sleep like I do!) I found myself in the garden, turning off the trap and covering it over to stop the birds from getting in and the moths from getting out. I could see that there was definitely an elephant hawk moth in there, with its beautiful pink and green markings, but I had no idea what was waiting for us!

 As Saturday evening crept around Evelyn desperately wanted to empty the trap and see what was inside, so we went to the garden, with paper and pencil in hand to see what we had caught.

It’s been a very long time since I emptied the moth trap, the last time was with dad and may have been in the mid 1990’s, so I am VERY rusty on names of different moths. I thought it was best to photograph all of them and then identify them later. 

I have done my best to identify as many as I can, but please feel free to correct me, those who are in the know! I have shared some photos of some of them, because they are just so beautiful, and I have made a list of species and rough numbers.

This is really our first attempt, but I am planning to make Evelyn a chart, adding moths as we go, so we can remember names and count and record how many of each species we find.

We are extremely lucky that our garden backs on to woodland and a wildflower meadow. It also has hedges, ponds and lots and lots of flowers and herbs that Evelyn has grown, so plenty of different foods and habitats for local moths.

A Jersey Tiger Moth, Box Tree Moth, Large Yellow Underwing and an Early Thorn

Privet Hawk Moth, Rosy Footman, Elephant Hawk Moth and a Ruby Tiger Moth

Black Arches Moth, Small Magpie Moth, Riband Wave and a Meadow Grey?

Black Arches	1
Box Tree Moth	1
Bright-Line -Brown- Eye Moth	1
Comfrey Ermine Moth	1
Common Meadow Grey?	1
Dingy Footman Moth	20+
Dusky Sallow	1
Early Thorn Moth	1
Elephant Hawk Moth	6
Flame Shoulder Moth	1
Geometriade Moth	1
Jersey Tiger Moth	1
Large Yellow Underwing	1
Lesser Yellow Underwing	1
Magpie Moth (Small?)	3
Pale Prominent Moth	1
Powdered Quaker Moth	1
Privet Hawk Moth	1
Rosey Footman Moth	1
Ruby Tiger Moth	6
Riband Wave Moth	1
Silver Y	1
Small Fan Foot Moth	1
Straw Dot Moth	1
Twin spotted quaker	1
Yellow Tailed Swan Moth	1

 

We caught a definite 26 different species of moth in one night, there were some more, but many of them were micro moths, and I really can’t remember much about those yet. I hope we will get more efficient at identifying and recording the moths as we go on, but for now, this is what we caught and we are quite pleased with ourselves. I think that dad would be pleased that we are using his trap, Evelyn really loved it!

Hopefully we can bring you more moth trap escapades soon!

Sarah and Evelyn

Flame Shoulder Moth