Where do cinnas drink?

No, that is not a spelling mistake and it it not a reference to our evening in the Bucks Head! Answer is of course in a Cinnabar, and I was pleased to get one in my trap last night. There has been a lot of activity and my trap on Sunday night and last night has produced some quite pretty and very different moths, as hopefully you will see from the photos below. It is interesting that with only a couple of miles between our traps and the fact that we are in similar environments, we are often getting a different selection of moths, though there are those in common too. So, I will not mention the two Small Elephant Hawk-moths I got last night.

Sunday night produced the following new moths for me here: White-pinion Spotted, Scorched Wing and Small Phoenix (all geometrids).

White-pinion Spotted

Scorched Wing

Small Phoenix

                                                                   

There were a couple of micros on the front lawn and they were Diamond-back Moths and they are "important" because they are immigrants, sometimes arriving in the UK in large numbers and can breed here - and from reports from Yorkshire, this seems to be a bumper year. (Not a good photo I'm afraid).

Diamond-back Moth

This morning, as on Monday morning, the most numerous "thing" in the trap was Cockchafer beetles! However, there were some more pleasant surprises.

First was a different Nematopogon (longhorn) moth N. schwartziella (cf. my previous post) this one being a bit smaller and slightly darker.

Nematopogon schwartziella

Star of the show for me was the above mentioned Cinnabar. You will have seen its caterpillars, with black and yellow bands, feeding on ragwort. There was also a Buff Ermine as well as a White Ermine.

Cinnabar

Buff Ermine

There was an Orange Footman too, not really a surprise, but 10 years ago it would have been "a suspected immigrant", but now seems to live throughout the UK.

Orange Footman

Then there was a Pug - a species of moth which are considered very difficult to identify easily. Fortunately there are a few which are easy, and this included the Foxglove Pug - you may look back and find a photo of its caterpillar.

Foxglove Pug

Swallow Prominent, Muslin Moth, White Ermine and Spectacle and last but not least was a Common Swift, reminding me that I have lived here more than 9 months now and that most of the moths in the future may be repeats - though there are still several hundreds to find!

Swallow Prominent

Muslin Moth

Spectacle

Common Swift