Wednesday, May 26, 2010
I'm still a bit old fashioned when it comes to identification. I want to look in a book to find out what something is. This means that I have lots of books about identification of birds (not that it means that I get it right of course) and when it comes to moths and butterflies the same applies. The two moths that I proffered yesterday were not in my book, so I had to go to my percieved second option and ask someone else. I could have done what Jonathon claims to have done and go to the UK Moths website and look through the pictures of all the species until I found the right one, and then wouldn't have bothered y'all with my little request. The thing is that it never actually occured to me! Not for one minute did I think that there may have been a valuable resource online that could help. Not in a book, see. So for those that are still interested...
Image 1 was a Bee Moth Aphomia sociella and it is common. Bee Moths are sexually dimorphic, and this was a female. They are, of course, common.
Image 2 was a Light Brown Apple Moth Epiphyas postvittana. UK Moths says the following about it...
This originally Australian species was probably accidentally introduced into Cornwall in the 1930's and since then has spread quickly northwards, and is now regular in many parts, and very common in some areas [of course - Ed.].
A pest species in Australian orchards, it is one of the most catholic polyphages in Britain, and should be considered as a possibility when identifying larvae off any plant.
It flies in two generations between May and October.
So there.
For the sake having a picture - here is another moth. It is called a Grey Dagger. But it might be a Dark Dagger. The only way to tell them apart is to analyse their genitals. And it might kill it. Which is a bit unfortunate if you just found the rarer of the two, yes? But I don't know how to analyse moth genitals and to be honest, I have no inclination to find out. So lets assume that it's the common species, right?
Grey Dagger doing Acronicta psi
What I'll do today, right, is go out into the patch and watch some birds. Good idea, eh? Don't go thinking that this blog is going to go all moth mad all summer. It's is but a small diversion. Honest guv.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Continuing the rather rubbish theme of moths and kitchen there have been some of note recently. To me, not of any national significance nevermind local significance. I find that I locate a moth, spend an age trying to identify it and then find out that it is so common that seeing a Robin in a west London garden is actually more interesting. Anyway, recently there has been Golden Fringe, Garden Pebble, Common Pug, Hebrew Character and a carpet whose name escapes me.
A lot of people on the interweb don't try and work out what the identification of a species is. They just lazily upload their pictures to Birdforum or some such and learn nothing in the process. At the opposite end of the scale, lies yours truly. Utterly determined to identify everything for myself, but failing due to the limited resource before me. There are two (probably common moths) that I frustratingly cannot identify. These two that I present here are not in my book (or at any angle that makes them identifiable) and I proffer them to the wider world (photographed in my incredible moth catcher).
A moth doing unidentified.
Another moth doing unidentified.
Any ideas?
Thursday, March 11, 2010
If you are not interested in the finer details of large gull identification, you may as well quit this post now. Come back tomorrow, there is nothing for you here...
I arrived at the Wandle yesterday, and there were two Lesser Black-backed Gulls (LBB) on a post. As you may know, the LBB doesn't have a black back unless it is a fuscus fuscus so the more accurate name for it should be Lesser in-the-top-half-of-the-Kodak-gray-scale-chart-backed Gull. Anyway, it is not uncommon to find slightly different shades on the back of these gulls in this area, and I usually (and sensibly) dismiss them as individual differences, but there was a third bird yesterday that I thought was dark enough to warrant further investigation. You never know, I might find a continental intermedius on the patch. So I peered at it for a bit, took some photos, came to no conclusion at all and left.
Later that day, I pulled out the big scary gull book to see if I had a graellsii or an intermedius. It was all quite inconclusive as the shades of gray differ and there is a certain amount of interbreeding between the two subspecies. That was until I stumbled on the killer bit of ID factness.
And there it is, plain to see.
Once you know, you know. And I now know that the small mirror on P9 makes it an absolute certain
graellsii. Excellent, it's just a common bird. Just like all the others on the patch.
See, I told you that you there was nothing else but gulls today.
