Moths & Butterflies of Anagach Woods - Sunday 24th June 2018

Both adults and kids seemingly enjoyed the moth and butterfly event on June 24th at Grantown’s Anagach Wood. While the boring grown-ups stood around patiently looking at every moth that came out of the trap, the kids had much more fun taking a "hands on" approach and wanting to take home their adopted pet moth. With lovely names such as True Lover's Knot, Beautiful Brocade, Mottled Beauty and Map-winged Swift, who could blame them!

 

After the excitement of the traps, we took a wander to the 'old tip' to look for the gorgeous metallic coloured Six-spot Burnet moth. Two years ago, Mike Taylor, our VC moth recorder, confirmed this was the largest inland colony of burnet moths, as a tally of around 300 was counted.  We found caterpillars, cocoons and adults, and saw their foodplant, Bird's-foot Trefoil. The kids were truly impressed! These were by far the highlight for them, although we did have a couple more species of butterfly to throw in, but perhaps less impressive after the large numbers and the showiness of the burnet moths.  At the last moment, before we all retreated for lunch, a Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary was spotted – perhaps the best butterfly of the morning.  We enjoyed the amazing weather, unusual for the Highlands and wished for it to be like this more often – at least, for us butterfly enthusiasts.

 

The moth list is as follows (slightly disappointing, as there was a slip-up when setting up the traps the night before, but we’ll not go into that):

 

Broken-barred Carpet	Lesser Swallow Prominent	Smoky Wave
Brown Rustic	Light Emerald	Square-spot Rustic
Beautiful Golden Y	Map-winged Swift	True Lover’s Knot
Common Marbled Carpet	Middle-barred Minor
Dark Arches	Mottled Beauty	Crambus lathoniellus
Dark Brocade	Narrow-winged Pug	Dichrorampha montanana
Flame Shoulder	Peacock	Eucosma cana
Gothic	Purple-bar	Lozotaenia forsterana
Grey Pine Carpet	Saxon	Phiaris schultziana
Ingrailed Clay	Setaceous Hebrew Character	Pleurota bicostella
Large Emerald	Silver-ground Carpet	Scoparia ambigularis

 

Checking the traps

 

Checking out the moths

 

Life cycle of a Six-spot Burnet Moth.  Above from left, larva, pupa and adult emerging.

Below, adult and the cycle starts again

 

 

 

Small Heath Butterfly