How to Identify Woodland Moths

I was walking my dog one day looking for insects as you do and I came across these fantastic lucky moths. So I decided to follow the progress of this little nest and discovered that they actually were not just on oak trees like this but also on blackthorn and even other host bushes. As they grew they became quite active and even frenzied in their movements as they shed their skins and got bigger and bigger and then one day they had gone. What actually happens is that they fall to the ground to pupate but I couldn't find any pupae to show you. However it set me wondering what other moths might be present in woodland areas and I knew just the man to talk to, Mike Sainer of the Holt Cops Conservation Volunteers. Hello this evening we're in John and Pip Robinson's garden that backs on to Holt Cops, an ancient semi-natural wood in Wokingham. The wood belongs to Wokingham Town Council. Holt Cops Conservation Volunteers manage it on their behalf for people and for wildlife. Moths are an important part of the food chain in woods and they're also important pollinators which not everyone realises. This evening we're lucky enough to have John Cole with us, a local entomologist. He's brought along his mercury vapour light trap to see if we can catch any of the moths that are about at this time of the year and then tomorrow morning we'll come back, see what we've caught and hopefully identify the species. So John, perhaps you can tell us a little bit about yourself. Thank you for having me. My name is John Cole, I'm a local entomologist and I'm also a member of the British Entomological and Natural History Society which is based here locally at Dinton Pastures and also a member of the Berkshire Moth Group. What we've got here is a mercury vapour lamp, a 125 watt mercury vapour lamp. This will attract the moths because it produces some UV light. This is the bulb holding cone unit. This on the top here is a rain guard because these bulbs run very very hot and if rain hits it they could crack or explode. So I've put that to one side. Here we have the plastic collar which goes on the top of the trap and holds the bulb holder and inside we have a selection of egg trays, standard egg trays which you get from the butcher. Cut them in half and layer them inside the the trap and what that does is allow the moths to come in and sit quietly. They'll settle down into the little gaps and pockets inside the egg tray and they'll stay quiet through the night and hopefully they'll be quiet in the morning when we come along and have a look at the moths. Now what happens is when the moths come in they're attracted to light and they tend to fly around it and as in doing so they'll hit these veins on the cone and then, I don't think it gives them a headache or not, but anyway they drop down into the into the trap and now they'll stay until the morning. I'm going to switch this on now and you see it doesn't come on bright, fully bright straight away. It has to warm up a little bit and it'll start to get brighter and brighter and brighter until you really don't want to look at it. It's not safe to look at stare at it for any length of time because of the UV light as it can damage your retina. Right it's early in the morning and we're here to look at the moths in the moth trap. I'm here with my trusty kit in case anything escapes and the wonderful thing about moth trapping is you don't know what you're going to find in the morning and I can also already see some things on the white sheet which look interesting so we'll just put this down. That's a square spot rustic that's a common marbled carpet yeah you're right that was a brimstone moth the yellow one pretty little thing and we have another square spot rustic rather unassuming looking moth this is called a willow beauty lesser yellow underwing ah did you see the flash then yeah we have a lot of hornets in here actually I've seen there you need to stand back whilst I move the thing out of the way there will be docile at this time of day so you've got to be really careful now there's a yellow underwing on here that's the large yellow underwing one of the theories is that if they're attacked by a bird or something they just flash their hind wings open the forewings flash the hind wings and theoretically might might if they're lucky scare the bird off you've got some light emerald it's called the light emerald now this is what's called a snout only that's it's called a snout because the um the palps at the front tend to stick forward but sometimes they lose their palps like this one has there's two square spot rustics here and there two more yellow underwings and something called a vines rustic here three large yellow underwings whoa I got the whole flaming hornet's nest they must be attracted a bit by the light I think uh by the the um uv I would guess but also they're attracted by that there's prey you can see there's broken wings and things in there so they've been been eating stuff a brindled green and that is but neither do not uh September thorn and as we're in September it's always just worthwhile tapping local vegetation around see if anything flies off because they will alight on vegetation but it was very cold last night so seemingly they went into the trap um so we had 12 species not too bad but a little disappointing perhaps for the time of year but it was a cold night sort of thing we might expect at this time of year are much larger more spectacular things like the red and blue underwings um but unfortunately none here maybe it was a bit too chilly last night for them to fly but look out for those big seemingly big gray moths about uh I guess inch and a half in length as you're looking at them and if they open their wings you'll see lovely coloration underneath red or blue um and they'll probably go on till the end of the month thanks again to John Cole it was encouraging that we caught as many species as we did particularly after a cold night and I it just shows how important woodlands are to biodiversity we should really invite John back again because you need to trap three or four times to get a comprehensive picture of the number of species in an area perhaps that gives us something to think about for the future