6 July 2013

6 July 2013 – Lovely Day And Lovely Pictures.

It’s been an absolutely wonderful day here at Shandy Hall – perfect for our event with the Jesus College, Cambridge alumni and choir today! I’ve been running around tending to the moths, but also taking pictures of the events of the day, manning the shop, and collecting sticky tack. I’ll see if we have any good pictures that I can post on tomorrow’s blog.

I was going to blog about another moth today, but I felt that the weather called for one of the more lovely specimens we’ve seen these past few days. The Light Emerald (Campaea margaritata) is an absolutely beautiful moth. Most green moths start out a vibrant green color, but this particular color fades much quicker than do the colors of other moths. You can easily tell that an emerald is a few days old if the green on the wings has faded to a paler shade or sometimes even completely white! Margarita ‘a pearl’ describes this moth’s very pale green starting color, most of which the specimen we caught still had. Kampe can mean either ‘a bending, a change of direction’ or ‘a caterpillar,’ describing the kind of way the looper caterpillar of the Light Emerald bends. The second caterpillar we found the other a few days ago was also a looper. The Light Emerald is number 274 on our count.

Light Emerald (Campaea margaritata)

Even though I said I’d just do a moth a day, I found a Large Yellow Underwing yesterday that I just felt like I ought to at least post a picture for. It flew out of the trap and landed in a lovely background of white flowers. Absolutely stunning.

Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua pronuba)

– Post by Jane Wu