Some reasonable catches in our garden in Wolvercote, Oxfordshire, in recent days: Elephant and Small Elephant Hawkmoths have shown up in numbers, though I haven't seen a Poplar Hawkmoth all year so far - in our previous garden, about 200 metres away, they were regular. I had two
Metalampra italica last night, which is a micro I always like to see. And a couple of nights ago, I fished a macro out of our garden pond which wasn't too badly damaged, and which looks to me as though it might have been a Small Ranunculus: the ground colour looks about right, and the markings not too bad; wing length is about 14mm; any thoughts? It's not a species I've seen before.
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| Possible Small Ranunculus, 10/6/20 |
Meanwhile, I think this is pretty clearly the same species of micro from two nights: and I wonder whether it's
Scythropia crataegella - but I have a suspicion I'm missing something obvious.
Steve Goddard
Hello Steve,
ReplyDeleteOn first glance I thought your macro looked like a Nut-tree Tussock but I'm really not sure what it is so I'd suggest that's one to forget about. The two micros are indeed Scythropia crataegella.
Hi Steve, I think you're correct with Small Ranunculus. There's definitely the orange-gold in the reniform stigma and, although worn, what's left matches up. As always, photographing alongside a ruler would help with the ID.
ReplyDeleteThanks, both: Nigel, I'll edit the post with a photo with a ruler: I didn't post it in the first place because it's not very good...
ReplyDelete