August Moths

So far September has been a busy month, so it's taken me a while to get round to noting the moths that we found in August. But here they are - the weather wasn't as hot and dry as it should be in a normal August (if there is such a thing) so numbers were down, but there were still a few 'firsts' in the trap.  Pictures and catch lists below.

Peach Blossom - Thyatira batis

2 Aug 2014

Ash-bark Knot-horn (micro)

Black Arches

Brimstone

Buff Ermine

Common Wave

Dusky Thorn

Flame Shoulder

Furness Dowd (micro)

Garden Pebble (micro)

Garden Tiger

Grey/Dark Dagger

Iron Prominent

Jersey Tiger

Lunar Thorn

Marbled Piercer (micro)

Oak Eggar

Orange Swift

Pale-streak Grass-veneer (micro)

Peach Blossom

Riband Wave

Scalloped Hook-tip

Scalloped Oak

Shuttle-shaped Dart

Silver Y

Small Grey (micro)

Straw Dot

Swallow Prominent

Willow Beauty

Scalloped Hook-tip - Falcaria lacertinaria

22 Aug 2014

Angle Shades

Brimstone

Cabbage Moth

Clay

Common Grass-veneer (micro)

Common Marble (micro)

Common Rustic

Dark-bordered Pearl (micro)

Dusky Thorn

Elbow-stripe Grass-veneer (micro)

Flame Shoulder

Iron Prominent

Large Yellow Underwing

Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing

Lesser Swallow Prominent

Lesser Yellow Underwing

Light-brown Apple Moth

Maiden’s Blush

Narrow-winged Grey (micro)

Peacock

Setaceous Hebrew Character

Silver Y

Small Square-spot

Smoky Wainscot

Snout

Square-spot Rustic

Willow Beauty

31 August 2014

Brimstone

Chinese Character

Oak Eggar - Lasiocampa quercus subsp. quercus

Common Marbled Carpet

Common Rustic

Feathered Gothic

Green Carpet

Iron Prominent

Large Yellow Underwing

Lesser Yellow Underwing

Light Emerald

Orange Swift

Small Bush Bell (micro)

Small Dusty Wave

Small Square-spot

Snout

Square-spot Rustic

Wasps on Apples

It's the time of the year when apples are ripening and starting to fall off the trees.  It is also the time when queen wasp grubs and male wasp grubs pupate and stop producing their sweet excrement.  In a remarkable give and take process, adult wasps catch and kill (usually) smaller insect prey which they do not have the mouth-parts to ingest.  They carry the prey back to the nest and feed it to their larvae which do have suitable mouth-parts.  The larvae then digest the prey and produce sweet sugary excrement much like the honeydew produced by aphids.  This is then eaten by the adult wasps so that they have enough energy to fly off and catch more prey.  When the colony reaches the end of the cycle and the new queens and males emerge, there are no more larvae to feed the now redundant workers, so they go off to find other sources of sugar, such as the sweet soft drinks to be found in pub beer gardens or the jam in the Victoria sponge you took on your picnic.

They will also look for rotting fruit such as the windfall apples beneath your apple tree, and in many cases will start eating the apples before they fall off the tree if they are ripe enough.  Despite their reputation, wasps are not generally aggressive and will not sting unless severely provoked, for example, by not cutting a slice of Victoria sponge for them.  (Though when they do sting, they produce a pheromone that will cause other nearby wasps to go on the offensive.)

The pictures below are of Red Wasps on apples, a German Wasp chewing fence wood for nest-building, and another German wasp that got caught in the moth trap.

Fortunately wasps are not provoked by having a camera stuck in their face - even when they are drunk on fermenting apple juice.

German Wasp on Fence - Vespula germanica

Red Wasp - Vespula rufa

Red Wasp - Vespula rufa

German Wasp - Vespula germanica

German Wasp - Vespula germanica