Side-by-Side

Last night's catch was poor - the two traps only yielded eight moths in total - but it has some relevance to a couple of things in this blog.  In both cases, I'm able to include some side-by-side comparisons.

The first - and uncontroversial - is Martin Wainwright's item earlier today about pale male Muslin Moths. One of the two males that I found in the traps this morning was noticeable paler than the other, though less pale than the one in Martin's photographs, and nowhere near as pale as others on the web. They were very compliant this morning, and I was able to place them side by side to be photographed. The photograph seems to show less difference between them than I saw: to the naked eye, the black dots on the paler one were much more noticeable than on the dark individual.

Muslin Moths, Newton Longville 21st April

Head-on view of Muslin Moths (paler one on the left)

The other couple of moths that caught my eye were both Orthosia. One is plainly a Common Quaker, and when I potted the other this morning, I thought "Powdered Quaker", but it brought to mind the recent discussion over the moth that Steve Lockey shared. I managed to photograph both of the moths together - though they were less cooperative than the Muslin Moths - and I've electronically glued Steve's Quaker beside them for comparison. Steve's has the pink background, though pay no attention to the relative size as I haven't got a basis to make it to the same scale.

Quakers - L and C: Newton Longville 21st April (Tim Arnold)

R: Garsington 17th April (Steve Lockey)

You can see that my Quakers were initially showing their antennae. The moth on the right only showed one antenna, and it then stowed even that away when I tried to take a closer photograph: hence its undignified position in the photo below.

View of possible Powdered Quaker, showing antenna

After reading the various sources, including Chris Lewis's site to which Martin Harvey referred, I think mine is a Powdered Quaker. It is slightly larger than its cousin; the forewing seems more pointed, the ground colour is paler (though Common Quakers are very variable); there's a fine speckling of black dots; the trailing half of the kidney is darker even if the stigma are large, and it has the line of dark dots beyond it. I'm only a novice and sometimes it feels like the more I read, the less I think I know! I've retained the moth, just in case.

Tim Arnold

Newton Longville, Bucks