Two Beauties!

And the weather man was not wrong. The temperature stayed around 6° and in the trap this morning were "two beauties". Well, in fact there were more than that, but two new moths for the site.

Viewers of the blog are reminded of the mistaken Small Brindled Beauty post of a few weeks ago. Now it can be put right as there were two SBB's in the trap (how could I have got that wrong?). The photos below show them and one of them approaches the dark form which exists. No confusion here with male and female, as the females are wingless.


Small Brindled Beauty

A tip from Colin Plant is that the antenna of SBB are yellow, those of PBB are brown and those of BB are black.


Small Brindled Beauty

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But perhaps you thought these were the two Beauties of the title - well no, because there is a much prettier Beauty and that is the Oak Beauty. There were two Pale Brindled Beautys too, and a Satellite, Spring Usher, Chestnuts and Dotted Borders, for a total of 13 moths.

Here are pictures of the Oak Beauty and the Satellite. Note the different colours of the "satellites" circling the "planet" from that of a previous  post.


Oak Beauty

Satellite

After the cold rush ...

With the forecast for reasonably warm nights for Monday and Tuesday, it was a good idea to put the trap on. All the more so that it is the AGM of the Strettons Area Community Wildlife Group (SACWG) tomorrow night and it will be nice to take some speciments to show.

So, the idea proved to be a good one as there were 25 moths on Monday and nearly 50 last night, though over half were Spring Ushers.

As would be expected, since we have only been trapping here since August, each month should produce new moths and January has now done so, though nothing that could not be expected.

In December I caught an early Pale Brindled Beauty and in the trap were several more of them, but in addition, their smaller, darker 'cousin', a Small Brindled Beauty (also a bit early). Their larger 'uncle' the Brindled Beauty is still to come.

You can compare the Small and Pale versions by clicking on the "Labels" on the right.

Small Brindled Beauty

The first of the common spring micro-moths turned up in number this morning. This moth is called Tortricoides alternella, its name being much bigger than the moth is. It has no "English" name. A pleasant surprise was to find an Acleris hyemana and a Ypsolopha ustella also present. Both of these moths have featured before in the blog, but the latter without its photo..



Tortricoides alternella

 

Ypsolopha ustella

This moth can be very variable, but the small "spike" sticking up on the 'palps' (its "nose" ) is an aid to identification. This can clearly be seen if you enlarge the photo.