Shandy Hall Moths
11 August 2023
28 July 2023 – TRIPLE New Species Alert!
Among the hundreds of moths in the trap this morning, we found a tiny Acleris holmiana, a rosy Endotricha flammealis, and a pearly Anania lancealis. Acleris holmiana, sometimes called White-triangle Button or Golden Leaf-roller, is a micro-moth from the Tortricidae family. It might have gone undetected in the Shandy Hall gardens for so long because […]
25 July 2023
18 July 2023 – A Golden…Plusia!
I’ve got a Golden… Plusia! Shandy Hall has been graced by a new species! The Golden Plusia (Polychrysia moneta) is a macromoth belonging to the Noctuidae family and the Plusiinae subfamily. Though this invasive moth had colonized most of England by the late 19th century, its numbers have dwindled in the north since the 1950s. […]
25 July 2023
13 July 2023 – Arts and Sciences
The trap this morning was predominantly ‘Common’, with 57 Common Rustics and 28 Common Footmans making an appearance.The Heart and Darts were as populous as usual, numbering 28 as well (although they seem to be getting significantly more worn and lethargic).The Large Yellow Underwings’ reign of terror continues. With every egg carton I removed from […]
16 July 2023
10 July 2023 – Rise of the Yellow Underwings
There was a time, earlier in the year, when the appearance of a Yellow Underwing in the trap was scarce, but no longer. Now the various Yellow Underwings have made their presence ubiquitous: They seem to be always lurking in the deepest recesses of the trap’s egg cartons, hidden in the bark of a rotting […]
13 July 2023
4 July 2023 – Cold-weather Catch
The moths in the trap this morning were of a rather homogenous variety. Because the weather has been unusually windy and cold, only the toughest moths dare to fly. Dark Arches, Heart-and-Darts, various Wainscots and a few Poplar Hawk-moths were the most common by far. There were hardly any micro-moths at all: Only a few […]
4 July 2023
4 July 2023 – Mother of Pearl, an Inspiration to Science
Mother of Pearl (Patania ruralis) was another catch I’ve been waiting to see. This was a particularly beautiful and well-marked specimen: the photograph can’t do justice to the iridescence of its wings. The Mother of Pearl’s beauty is such that it almost appears as a tiny, nocturnal fairy: glinting in the moonlight, its flight pattern […]
3 July 2023
28 June 2023 – Buff-tipped Marble
After an unseasonably chilly start to the summer, moths are finally starting to return to the trap at Shandy Hall in larger numbers. The Elephant Hawkmoth (Deilephila elpenor) is a more recent visitor, with the flight season just beginning: We only caught one (the first of the summer) in the previous trap, but this morning […]
3 July 2023
23 June 2023 – Moth or Butterfly?
A Cinnabar (Tyria jacobaeae) paid us a rare visit this morning! Although they do fly after dark, these moths also tend to fly in the day, even in the sunshine and are often mistaken for butterflies. It’s just as well to a hungry predator, because like many similarly-colored butterflies, they are poisonous if ingested. Though […]
26 June 2023
20 June 2023 – Bee, Straw, Emerald and a Ghost
The latest trap contained a bounty of moths that were new to me, and plenty of old friends as well. There were 28 species in total: some showed up in number, like the Straw Dot (Rivula sericealis) and the Buff Ermine (Spilosoma luteum) (each having 14 representatives in the trap) and some, like the lovely Light […]
20 June 2023
17 June 2023 – Old and New
The prehistoric-looking Beautiful Golden Y (Autographa pulchrina) is a new catch for me. The golden yellow spots, combined with the purple and mauve wings, make for an exceedingly striking appearance. The tufted thorax gives an air of a tiny Stegosaurus, perched fearsomely upon a flower petal. This moth flies in June and early July, earlier […]
13 June 2023
12 June 2023 – Sharks in Coxwold
My first time sighting a shark (moth) at Shandy Hall! I’ve been terrified of sharks my whole life, but this little fellow was quite docile and fuzzy – far from fearsome. Shargacucullia refers to a genus of moths known as the Sharks, or, as translated, the Shark-Hooded ones. Verbasci is simply the genitive of Verbascum, […]
10 June 2023
6 June 2023 – A Real Spectacle
Peering into the moth trap this morning yielded a pair of eyes, staring right back! Abrostola tripartita, or ‘Spectacle,’ sports two unmistakable black spots surrounded by white, giving the impression of two eyes, (or perhaps a pair of reading glasses) on the thorax when viewed from the front. Seemingly, these “eyes” could give unsuspecting predators […]
Recent Moths
- The Splendid Scarlet Tiger
- An Uncertainty of Species
- A New Micro-moth that Inhabits Where Others Do Not
- Brown Moths and ‘Binsey Poplars’
- SHANDY HALL MOTH LIST to August 2025 (alphabetical with links)
- Rise of the AI Naturalist
- Best Moths for a Haunted Abbey
- The Real and Fake Deaths of Moths
- The Colonizers of Yorkshire
- Glamour in the Dark: Two Newcomers Arrive at Shandy Hall
- 25 July 2023 – Collective Noun for Hawkmoths
- MOTH LIST to August 2023 with links
