Category: Fauna


Village Voices Nature Notes: Moth Matters

I’ve had some big game in the garden at night recently – two elephants, three tigers and a leopard for starters. Also a menagerie of smaller creatures, including: a fox, puss, kitten, mouse, some tabbies, several hummingbirds and peacocks, lots of pugs and even a shark, though I’m still hoping for my first lobster and goat. No, this isn’t some radical Shingle Street rewilding exercise; these are just a few of the weird and wonderful names of the moths that grace our gardens every night and lurk unseen in them by day. Mention moths and most people immediately think of clothes moths. These are the moths referred to in the Bible, where we are advised not to lay up our treasures on earth ‘where moth and rust doth corrupt’. But there are only two kinds of clothes moths in the UK – really tiny ones, and in any case it’s their larvae (caterpillars) that cause the problem. You might be amazed just how many other kinds of moths there are out there – some 2,500 kinds in the UK as a whole. And with the expert help of Nick Mason, our local moth-er (don’t forget the hyphen), I’ve found a remarkable tally of over 350 different species just in my own back garden. Most moth species were first identified and named by naturalists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and they bequeathed to us this wonderful lexicon of names, not just the animal ones mentioned above but a whole treasure-house of footmen, quakers, wainscots, rustics, lutestrings, carpets, fanfoots, tussocks, darts and daggers. There are also some wittily intriguing ones like the Uncertain, the Suspected and the Confused. How splendid to know that we have living amongst us a Setaceous Hebrew Character, a Pebble Prominent and the lovely Merveille du Jour. 

Peppered moth. Photo: Jeremy Mynott

Moths matter. They’re an index of the health of our environment. Readers of my generation will remember the ‘moth snowstorms’ we used to get years ago on our car windscreens. Not anymore. Despite the captivating diversity I mention above, moth abundance has declined dramatically in recent years. Disastrously too, since moths are a key part of the larger eco-system: they pollinate plants, and their caterpillars are a crucial food-source for birds, just as the adults themselves are for bats and for birds like our heathland nightjars. Hence the elaborate camouflages they adopt – as in the featured Peppered Moth blending perfectly with the blotches on my paving. 

Moths are also beautiful when you see them close-up. Take a look at the ones on the Shingle Street website under Gallery.

Heretical to say it, but they make the gaudier butterflies look almost vulgar.

Jeremy Mynott
August 2022


snout

31 Aug 2022
Last moth trapping of August was a bit meagre after a blustery night with showers, but we did catch a lot of Snouts, an ugly name for another subtly marked moth (and you can see why it is called that from its elongated palps).
Jeremy

golden plover

01 Sep 2022
First golden plover of the autumn on one of the pools. It's scientific name is Pluvialis, which means 'rain bird', so let's hope it's an omen for a much-needed downpour. I'm signing off for a while now, so please keep the observations coming.
Jeremy

Hummingbird hawk moth

29 Aug 2022
This lovely moth is a regular visitor to the red valerian in our garden.
Catherine

short-eared owl

26 Aug 2022
Flushed a short-eared owl from the foreshore between SS and East Lane at about 1600hrs. First of the autumn, but from where?
Jeremy

linnets

25 Aug 2022
The linnet flock on the grassland past the Beacons is now 100 strong. Joined today by a wheatear passing through and perching occasionally on the memorial bench.
Jeremy

Chinese water deer

23 Aug 2022
We get Chinese water deer around the dykes in SS, usually shy and well-concealed, but I had a great view of one in the open on Orford Ness, galloping across the stone desert.
Jeremy

pied flycatcher

20 Aug 2022
A pied flycatcher in the trees round the allotment patch. Probably a migrant from Scandinavia. Can be hard to spot because they move restlessly in the upper branches, but often call – a high pic-pik followed by some ticking notes (OK, not very helpful, sorry, but once you've learned it you can locate them much more easily).
Jeremy

migrant birds

18 Aug 2022
There's been a fall of migrant birds down the east coast with the change in the weather. Pied flycatchers and whinchats have been seen in SS, so look out for wrynecks too in the next few days
Jeremy

grayling

14 Aug 2022
Several graylings in the garden, always seen with closed wings when resting and well-camouflaged when on leaves, less so on patios. Said to align their bodies to the sun to reduce tell-tale shadows, which it partly achieves in this pic, but am doubtful about the claim in general.
Jeremy