I’m in a far, far sunnier mood this morning. Why? The weather is better, we’re in with a shout in the test match and, after yesterday’s tribulations over three small moths, I do have a couple of triumphs to report.
The first is that the moth which I found on my sleeve the night I came in from seeing Harry Potter has been properly identified for me. I was uncertain and suggested a couple of species but someone with far better knowledge as now IDd it as a moth that for about 50 years had been feared extinct and has only fairly recently begun to reappear in Kent (next county south) here in Essex and also, somewhat strangely over on the other side of the island, in Wales. I not only got the species wrong but had placed it in the wrong noctuid family.
The fact that I’d been visited by such an unlikely moth is compensation. The original post complete with my mis-diagnosis is here, or you can just scroll back a couple of days. It is actually the Small Ranunculus (hecatera dysodea); a member of the hadeninae sub-family of noctuids.
The good news is that for a moth returning from the brink of extinction I have found either the same specimen or another one again this morning, found one on a walk I reported a couple of weeks ago and have found a third/fourth specimen among photos I took a couple of years ago. The food plant is the flowers and seeds of cultivated lettuce so I’m now looking carefully over the cut-and-come-again lettuce on the kitchen window-sill.
Small Ranunculus (hecatera dysodea) 30 June 2009
Small Ranunculus (hecatera dysodea) Bathroom, 11 September 2006
Ben has also confirmed that the moth I found in the past week in the kitchen was another Nationally Scarce B list species and that I’d correctly IDd the very tiny moth which is in yesterday’s post. He’s also (so far) stumped by the other two.
Ooo… rare moth back from the brink of extinction. That’s a good day!
A good find and also pretty and docile.