The weatherman said ....

That it was going to be warm last night, and he was right!

One of the best nights mothing for weeks!

There were more than 100 moths, of 10 species. OK, 77 of them were Mottled Umbers and 15 were Winter Moths, but so what.

The two above named species have something in common (along with a few others) and that is that the female moths are wingless, or virtually so. These female moths hatch out and sit around waiting for a male, mate, lay eggs on the same tree and, well you can guess the rest.

This means of course that these females never arrive in your trap and up to this week I had never seen one.

But, in the summer I had collected several larvae from trees and bushes around here and kept them fed and watered.  Several hatched out this week.


Winter Moth (f)



Winter Moth (m)



Mottled Umber (f)

 


                                                                                                             Mottle Umber (m)