Micro Moth
by Johan J Ingles-Le Nobel
Last updated August 31, 2017
Call me weird, but I personally think the little micros tend to be more interesting photographically than the big showy macro moths! This is about 2-3mm width of view. I couldn't ID this, I can't seem to find it in Goater or Skinner. Body length 5mm, gold sheen on wings, comes to light (caught in trap).
Moths are one of my particular interests ever since making a mothtrap as a little boy and watching 100s of the things come to the light of the trap late at night. Now that I have a boy of my own I've inflicted this on him and being a teenager, although he prefers his (awful) music to hanging out with dad doing a mothtrap like he should, nevertheless he's still interested whenever I empty it in the morning and comes out to have a look to see if any of the crowd pleasers like elephant hawk moths are hiding under the egg boxes.
Moths
Moths (Lepidoptera) are divided for convenience into two types: macro moths (larger moths) and micro moths (smaller). In terms of the UK, there are several hundred macro moths but there are several thousand micro moths. In contrast, there are only a couple of dozen or so butterflies and moths outnumber butterflies greatly in the British Isles.
Contrary to popular belief, moths actually do fly all the year round so there's always a macro subject out at night if you're suffering from withdrawal in the middle of the winter. Everyone knows that they come to light and the current theory is that this is something to do with navigation.
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