A successful night with the moth trap

Inspired by seeing the lunar hornet moth last week I set up the moth trap again.  My previous attempts haven't been very successful - on one occasion there was only one moth in the trap all night.  This time was different.  When I went to check the trap in the morning there were moths everywhere - on the lawn, on the surrounding plants and on the outside of the trap.  Inside this time there were over 100 moths and I reckon there were about 30 species, although I haven't quite identified all of them.

The largest, and perhaps the most exciting was a Poplar Hawk-moth, an easy one for me to identify.

I did recognise one or two others but I got a lot of help from Butterfly Conservation's section on moths (https://butterfly-conservation.org/moths).  Also very useful was a website What's Flying Tonight (https://shiny-apps.ceh.ac.uk/whats_flying_tonight/).  Using the date and a postcode it shows the 50 most likely species and did fairly well with mine.  With these and my Concise Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland, illustrated by Richard Lewington, I think I have managed to identify most of them.

The most numerous, but not predicted by What's Flying Tonight's top 50, was Common Footman.

Others in random order included:

July Highflyer

Coxcomb Prominent

Dark Arches

Beautiful Golden Y

Brimstone

True Lover's Knot

Gold Spangle

Heart & Dart

Light emerald.  It was fascinating to see that this one flew to the underside of a leaf where its markings would provide camouflage.

Large yellow underwing

Scalloped Oak

Poplar Grey

Riband Wave

That's probably enough for one post.  I'll post the others as soon as I have identified as many as I can.  If any of the identities is wrong please let me know.