Abington Naturewatch: Moths galore!

A week or two ago, Andy M had a go at trapping moths in his back garden. Using a mercury light trap (kindly lent to him by David F), Andy set up the trap around 10pm on two warm, calm evenings, (on 6th and 11th July), placing the trap in the middle of a white sheet on the lawn near the woodland edge, and left it to work its magic overnight. The white sheet allows those moths that are attracted to the light, but do not find their way into the trap, to be more easily seen. Early the next morning, Andy carefully looked inside the trap, where a good number of moths come to rest in shadowy crannies under old egg cartons, and photographed as many as he could, for identification later. Andy started by photographing the moths on the egg cartons in situ (just in case they decided to fly away), before moving them gently onto a leaf or piece of bark, where he photographed them again on a more natural background.

Moth trap on a white sheet, showing the egg cartons taken out of the trap the next morning, and a few boxes to temporarily hold the moths before photographing and releasing them.

Most of the rather splendid hawkmoths are relatively easy to identify, as are quite a few of the medium-sized moths. However, Andy also trapped a good number of very similar-looking smaller moths and micro-moths, that have thus far evaded identification! Please do let Andy know if you know what any of these 'unknown' moths are.

Andy found the following websites useful in identifying moths - although there are a surprisingly large number of moth species in the UK!
https://ukmoths.org.uk/. https://butterfly-conservation.org/moths