Not surprisingly, given the temperatures, Thursday night produced a big garden catch here in Wolvercote, Oxfordshire: I ran my mercury light, instead of the more usual actinic. Few hugely outstanding species, but large numbers, with Least Carpet (normally quite a rare treat here) one of the species that are doing well.
A few individuals I'm not sure of, which would push the night's count further up if pinned down:
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| Possibly a Grapholita lobarzewskii? - some 6mm long, so not a poorly marked Enarmonia formosana. |
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| A Monopis, but can it be pinned down to a particular species? |
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| Maybe Schoenobius gigantica? |
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| Should be an identifiable pug (looks a little like Double-striped, but I don't think so). |
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| No real ideas on this, though it looks fairly readily identifiable. |
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| Obviously an Yponomeuta, but again, can it be pinned down to a species? |
As ever, all thoughts gratefully received.
Steve Goddard
Hi Steve
ReplyDeleteI think the first moth is more likely to be Grapholita janthinana. The second is rather too washed-out with light to be sure what it is, other than a Monopis species. The reed-feeding pyrales can be quite difficult to sort out, especially when worn - you may be correct with Schoenobius gigantella (note spelling!) but I've seen females of Donacaula forficella look somewhat like that too. The Pug is indeed Double-striped and the next one is Apodia bifractella which doesn't normally stray far from fleabane (we had it as the cover moth on the blog for a year or so).
Finally, as we've mentioned many times before, most of the Yponomeuta species which look like your final image aren't separable unless you've reared them from the food-plant (it beats me how anyone decided they were all different species in the first place when their genitalia look the same!). Evonymella is OK because of its extra row of spots, irrorella is OK because of its dark smudges but isn't found in our area, plumbella is OK because of its prominent central black spot and sedella is OK because it is grey with no spots around the termen (but beware grey forms of the others - I've seen this one misidentified many times).
Hi Dave
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for this very thorough response, and point taken about the Yponomeuta. The Grapholita I'll take as being a good possibility, and I'm especially grateful for the definite identifications of the Double-striped Pug and Apodia: partly because they guarantee that the species count for that night goes over 100, which is a first for my garden! (a rather arbitrary landmark, but a nice one, especially given that we'll probably be moving from it soon). I haven't actually counted, but I think the number of individuals on the night was also a record, at over 500.
...and rorrella has a white stripe along the costa of the hindwing, according to the Swedish tomes.
ReplyDeleteCan I see a tornal spot on the Monopis, which would make it weaverella, but as Dave says, it is not at all clear