Beauty and the Beautiful

And they keep coming. Whenever the moth trap is out in our gardens we find new species. On Thursday night I caught a modest 41 species, but 17 of these were brand new for me along with several first sightings for the year.

Most of the new ones were micro moths, but amongst the new macro moths there were a couple of nice surprises. Firstly I found this Lilac Beauty resting on the window. This moth has a distinctive posture with the wings curled on the leading edge.

Lilac Beauty

Resting near the outside of the trap was this Beautiful Hook-tip, not a particularly common species. Coincidentally Graham recorded his first examples of both these species within a day of me doing so.

Beautiful Hook-tip

Among the macro moths I also had the opportunity to compare and contrast two of the difficult noctuid species to identify - Double-square Spot and Triple-spotted Clay. Superficially identical, they very in some of the markings and structure. See if you can tell the difference.

Double-square Spot (l) and Triple-spotted Clay (r)

Onto a selection of the new micros. The first I identified was  this pretty little micro Zeiraphera isertana.

Zeiraphera isertana

I also had several of the 'bird poo' moths (seeing at them this description makes sense). This is a range of tortrix species which are very similar with only subtle differences between them. They are difficult to identify and this one I think is Gypsonoma dealbana.

Gypsonoma dealbana

Finally there was a Green Oak Tortrix (thanks to Graham for the ID).

Green Oak Tortrix