h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

… is best. I'd forgotten. Winter/Spring's good – clear frosty skies, owls or foxes hunting, or the sound of a flock of migrating birds passing over and a select but classy set of moths. But a warm, still June night with moths bombing in is unbeatable.

Tonight is almost perfect – no moon, virtually no wind, dry and warmish. There's woodsmoke in the air, a tawny owl calling and so far several Silver-ground Carpets, two beautifully fresh Green Carpets, the year's first soot-coloured Willow Beauty, clumsy Large Yellow Underwing, Snout and Wainscott. And one that still needing identifing.

Closely followed by a Garden Carpet, Flame, Flame Shoulder, beautiful fluttery Clouded Silver, several deeply fluffy pale yellow Buff Ermine, a Poplar Grey and a gorgeous pink and green with natty white legs Elephant Hawkmoth.

The place is now humming with Buff Ermine, must be a couple of dozen. One drawback of warmer nights is the moths being much more active. It's hard to keep Buff Ermine out of the kitchen.

A Small Magpie, an Ingrailed Clay and a Lychnis have turned up.

Woke up too late to beat the birds. Despite the mist it's very light and they're all up, about and singing. Still there was a nice big Peppered Moth, the original non-industrial revolution adapted version on the wall, a rather washed out looking Hebrew Character in the ice plant and a few others collected to ID later.

Last thing last night there was a Light Emerald on the window. About 4cm wing-tip to wing-tip, mint green with a nearly invisible dark edge and a white and dark stripe across both wings to break up its shape or mimic a leaf.

A bat was hunting to and fro above the light from the trap too, haven't found any disembodied moth wings yet this morning though.

Hi there.
Excuse me for dropping into your journal, i saw 'June mothing' from the info page.
What sort of trap do you use to catch the moths? I've been looking round for a inexpensive trap that runs on battery power, but i don't know which ones are best. Any help would be great.
It's nice to find someone that likes moths as much as i do, alot of people don't see the beauty in them at all. Have you ever seen red belted clearwings? I get alot of those in my garden once the hebe's are in flower. It's a little early for them yet and being daytime moths, they are easy to spot.

Never seen any clearwings, no. I'd love to. We did try, sort of, with pheromone traps last year to see if there were any on a particular site. I want to have another go at that.

I use a Robinson. The OH has access to three trap types, so I've used both Skinners and the actinic but not in a way that means I can really compare them. The Robinson's the easiest to get out the shed and set up.

Is it the actinic you're thinking of? That's the only battery powered one of our three. It seems to me to be weaker in attracting moths, and the box trap is small but we've only used in in places where we've had to leave it overnight and come back in the morning. We've never got back early enough to see what moths are attracted but don't go in the box. It's still much better than an ordinary outside light though!

Somewhere recently I came across an article on making Skinner type traps youself for a £70 budget - imo the trap part is a glorified box, even cardboard would do, it's the light itself that makes the difference.

As you say, not many people seem to appreciate our moths so it's great to talk to someone who does . The OH knows more about the traps, I'll ask if he's heard anything comparing battery ones.

Have you done any trapping, and do you send records in?

Still got moths from last night to ID when I get home.

Elephant Hawkmoth. My absolute favourite. It brings back childhood memories of catching such a monster and chasing through books (no computers then!) to find out what it was. They are stunning.

Thanks for posting.

Websailor

Hi Waz! Great to hear from you again and of your mothing experience. I'll see about getting some moth pictures of the ones we have here! We have some very nice hawkmoths here as well. I've a couple of photos of a Death Head's Hawk Moth in caterpillar form!

The Elephant Hawkmoth's Barbie-pink outfit is astonishing in moth-world. Well, UK moth-world anyway. And with the white stockings it's all a bit Toddlers and Tiaras .

Photos of SA moths would be good - any pink ones Willem?

The rest of the night's list was a Bright-line Brown-eye, Common swift, Marbled Minor, Middle-barred Minor, Small Square-spot, Common Wainscott, Heart and Dart, Triple-spotted Clay, White Ermine and Bloodveins. 28, last year this time we had 46. It just got a touch cool, and not being up to check at daybreak I probably missed a few.

Ive only ever tried attracting moths with an ordinary light, it was ok, if you wanted a quick glimpse of a moth before it disapeared, not very satisfying. My problem is that i have no means of getting electricity to my garden, which is a long way from my first floor masionette. A battery trap is the only way,but they are incredibly expensive.
I've had a fascination with moths, caterpillars and other 'bugs' since i was a child. My folks never really appreciated me bringing various creatures with numerous legs into the house and were relieved once i had supposedly grown out of it. I did'nt grow out of it at all, just put it on the back burner while more important things took over for a while.
I keep records of other nature based things like the woodland trusts Natures Calendar, which covers alot of areas, but not moths. I send in my results as they happen.
Heres a couple of my photos of the clearwing and the moth who's name i can't type without looking it up http://public.fotki.com/Venus-Garden/weird-and-wondrous/redbeltedclearwing208.html#media
http://public.fotki.com/Venus-Garden/weird-and-wondrous/nemophora-degeerella.html
As you can see that last moth is a mouthfull to pronounce for such a small creature.

For a battery it has to be an actinic lamp, but I now realise you can fit actinics to different trap shapes. Our actinic is on a Heath trap, which seems a little small to me compared to the others. I'm afraid I don't know what difference the trap type makes – just the different bulbs, and that's due to the wattage mainly.

To be honest, I think it really is the lamp that counts. If a moth's the type to fall into the trap underneath they'll probably do that whatever the shape. I get more species the more time I spend with the trap catching the ones that come close but not onto and into the trap. And if I get up at dawn to get the later flying ones that settle near the light before they hide or the robin gets them.

Have you tried sugaring? I want to have a go at that.

I tried an electric light was when emptying my house before moving to the OH's. The spare room was completely empty so I left the window open all night with the light on. Got four nice moths, but for such a nice night four species wasn't that good! And it was quite a performance catching them.

Nice photos! Fantastic antennae.

My mother taught us the more common flowers, my father birds. Moths are a much more recent interest. All the insects are fascinating but I have to narrow it down to macro moths and butterflies for now or it's too much to take

in.