Moths in Shamley Green
Mother of Pearl moth, Patania ruralis
Shamley Green Moth records 2022 & 2023
As well as being cool for cats, Shamley Green is marvellous for moths! Its main advantage is its lack of streetlights and other high intensity illumination. The surrounding countryside is not intensively farmed and there is plenty of rough grassland and woodland with mature trees, as well as some nice big hedges between village gardens.
Small Elephant Hawk Moth Deilephila porcellus
Heart and Dart
Agrotis exclamationis
Lime Hawk Moth
Mimas tiliae
Most moths, at least the males, can fly a few kilometres in a night, so trapping in a village garden should provide, over a few years, a representative sample of the moth population in Shamley Green.
The United Kingdom has, since the 1950’s, recorded and maintained a database of lepidoptera populations in each county. This has proved extremely useful in demonstrating the effect of such things as pollution and climate change on insect populations. This data is submitted by thousands of amateur enthusiasts and painstakingly collated by County Moth Recorders (CMRs) and others onto a National Database accessible to all.
John Portess is one such enthusiast, and we are very grateful to him for his excellent records of moths from his garden in Shamley Green which he has also submitted to the National Database. He has identified an amazing 235 individual species to date, and because many common species have not appeared in the trap yet, plenty of new ones are expected in the coming years.
Box Tree Moth
Cydalima perspactalis
Blotched Emerald Moth
Comibaena bajularia
Merveille du Jour
Griposia aprilina
See our reports page for a comprehensive account of the methods used, and lists of all the species identified. All the great photos on this page are also from John's records.
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