Tuesday, 19 August 2014

Gold Spot help please

Hi, I trap moths in my garden in Cheddington, Bucks and have just joined your group. I wondered if someone can help me with the ID of a few moths we trapped last week. I don't think we have caught them before.
The first one we thought might be a Rusty-dot Pearl but it doesn't seem quite the right shape, the wings look more pointed and the tip of the abdomen is showing.
The second we had as a Gold Spot until we realised that there was the possibility of Lemke's Gold Spot - I wondered if it was possible to distinguish between them from our photo.
Lastly we caught a Crambidae that has me puzzled. The cilia were metallic although it doesn't show very well on the photo.
Any help would be great,
thanks, Lynne
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3 comments:

  1. Dave Wilton19 August 2014 at 20:30

    Hi Lynne, they are Udea ferrugalis, Gold Spot and Agriphila geniculea. There's been a bit of an invasion of Udea ferrugalis (Rusty-dot Pearl) over the past few weeks and they can be a bit variable in the intensity of their markings. Gold Spot and Lempke's Gold Spot are separated mainly by using the shape of the silver apical streak (not the two obvious silver marks, but the third one closer to the wing apex). In layman's language, it is long and pointy in Gold Spot and goes forward past the trailing end of the rear silver 'blob', whereas in Lempke's it is shorter, more blunt in appearance and doesn't! Both species do show some variation and it is occasionally difficult to tell them apart. In Bucks it will almost always be Gold Spot that you see (I don't think there are more than one or two confirmed Lempke's records for the county). If you do think at any time that you have a Lempke's it would need to be seen by Martin Albertini or Peter Hall.

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  2. Peter Hall19 August 2014 at 23:19

    Dave has summarised it perfectly.

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  3. Unknown20 August 2014 at 12:29

    That's great, thank you for your help. We have had Agriphila geniculea before but this one was so whitish and speckled it confused me.
    Lynne

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