Mothing beginnings

National Moth Day was held over three nights at the end of last month but in the end was a bit of a wash out.  I was all set to take part after Cain Scrimgeour and Heather-Louise Devey of Wild Intrigue kindly lent me a moth trap to try out in my garden.  In the end the weather wasn't good enough to put out the trap but I did give it a try on a dry night a few weeks earlier.  

Catching moths is the easy bit.  Identifying them is hard.  Dragonflies are manageable with around 45 UK species, butterflies are OK with fewer than 70, bees are difficult with around 275 species but then there are 2500 moth species in the UK.  I caught dozens of moths and I took lots of photos and borrowed a guide book and looked them up on a couple of websites but for an absolute beginner it is pretty intimidating and difficult to know where to start.  I had also booked on a workshop looking at moths with Cain and Heather but it was cancelled because of bad weather!

I was hoping to catch something exotic and colourful but all mine were grey and brown which is good for camouflage but doesn't make identifying then any easier.  Although they aren't all the same colour I think several of them the same species - Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua pronuba). 

I think these might be Dark Arches (Apamea monoglypha).

This might be a Common Carpet (Epirrhoe alternata).

This might be a Riband Wave (Idaea aversata).

To give you some idea here are some of the others I caught.

If I am to make anything of this I'll have to get or make my own trap and learn more about moths and get better at photographing them.  We'll see what happens.