Monday 27 August 2012

Oh! to be named common.

A moth arriving yesterday evening on the flyscreen was easily trapped by closing the window and was released this morning for a photo session. Quite an attractive moth with distinctive markings so when it came to identification the first moth I looked at in the family I thought it might belong to, was spot on. A "Common Anthelid" Anthela acuta, and this one a male as there is quite a colour and pattern variation between the sexes and I must say it does not look common to me.

One of the food plants for the caterpillars are wattles and we have quite a lot of naturally occurring species as well as ones we have planted in the gardens, so should not be surprised to see this moth.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Ian,
    Nice moth, and yes, judging by how regularly they turn up at my front porch light, they are pretty common.
    But as a fan of old model aeroplanes, who would not love this perfect Delta-winged model?
    Cheers
    Denis

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  2. Lovely looking moth Ian. Hopefully your wattles will attract more!

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  3. Hi Caroline & Denis thanks for the comments and I was pleased to see a moth turning up for a photo sesion as they have been a bit quiet of late.

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