Saturday 5 June 2010

More moths




A slightly warmer night and a few new species. Also lots of midges, not least when I was out soon after 6.00 am seeing what I had caught!
The three photos are of Scalloped Hazel, female Fox Moth (the male is brown rather than grey), and Common Yellow Conch. This last is classed as a micromoth and is just 10 mm long. It is also one of the easier micromoths to identify - many are so tiny that either a 10x or 20x hand-lens or a microscope is needed and some of the distinguishing features are less than obvious. Indeed, some species are easier to identify from their larval cases than from the adults! They are also very challenging in another way. While there are about 800 species of macromoths, there are about double that number of micros!

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