Saturday, October 24, 2009

After the birding excitement of yesterday it was time to 'chillax' ( see I'm down with it) with some garden mothing...

Chestnut 4
Common Wainscot 1
Large Yellow Underwing 2
November Moth 3
Common Marbled Carpet 1
Autumnal Moth 1
Grey Pine Carpet 1
Red-green Carpet 2
Rush Veneer 3
Garden Rose Tortrix 2
Light Brown Apple Moth 2

A total of 22 moths of 11 species. The Autumnal Moth is a new one for the garden. I'll get a photo tomorrow.

3 comments:

Skev said...

Meant to ask when I read this yesterday - have you confirmed your any of your November/Pale November/Autumnal Moth types through close inspection of their bits (do-able with a hand lens and wet paintbrush on the males)? Otherwise they can be very similar and difficult to identify on external features only.

Stewart said...

Aye Mark you've got me. I'm fully stringy with these and bestguess them! My Autumnal Moth is a female November moth on 'plumage' details alone.It didnt have the stand alone dots in the wing, but it did look different. I'll never be able to do Pale November Moths but fancies that Autumnal Moth looked a bit different? Can you give me some poiners so I dont need to get the scalpel or hand lens? Is it best to call them Epirrita?

Skev said...

Wish I could give pointers based on experience - but I've never seen either Pale November or Autumnal in my garden. I get a fair few 'November Moths' - all that have been checked have been November and I do record any not checked as Epirrita agg. (though I am fairly sure they are all November, certainly none have looked exciting!). Somewhere I have an ID article in an old issue of Atropos - I'll look it up and try to e-mail you a scan later in the week.

Come next summer and you'll be adding Marbled/Tawny Marbled/Rufous Minor, Common/Lesser Common Rustics and Grey/Dark Daggers to the aggregate pile .....