Emperor moth and caterpillar

Yesterday I was out for a walk up Ben Venue in Perthshire.

While we were walking through a rather boggy area, I met this HUGE caterpillar. It was probably about 6cm long, though I didn't measure it.

Usually, attractive caterpillars seem to end up as rather dull moths, but not this one. It is the caterpillar of the Emperor Moth (Pavonia pavonia). I had found one of these moths on the hills on 14th April 2007, and it is truly spectacular. The larger female, shown here, is not often seen because it mostly flies by night.

Two moths

Yesterday Fred spotted this colourful Brimstone moth on a cotoneaster bush in our garden.

I also found and photographed one of these on 13th May 2007.

We tend to think of moths as being rather drab in colour compared to butterflies, and flying only at night, but there are some notable exceptions.

Last week we saw this Six-spot Burnet which had just emerged from its chrysalis.

The Burnets are also brightly coloured moths which fly by day.

The chrysalis is attached to a grass stem.

For an excellent picture of emerging Burnet Moths, see Colin Jacobs' blog

Insects on ragwort

While walking in the forestry near our home, we found this moth feeding on some ragwort flowers. It is an ear moth (Amphipoea sp.). There are 4 British species of ear moth, which are very hard to tell apart.

These flowers were also popular with other insects including a strongly patterned hover-fly (Helophilus sp.)

Plume moths

We have a large honeysuckle growing by our front door. Back in June, we noticed that the flowers were shrivelling and falling off.

Looking more closely, we found that they had been attacked by very small caterpillars.We identified these as being the many-plumed moth, Alucita hexadactyla. The eggs are laid on the flower buds and the caterpillars live inside the flowers and feed on them.


On 11th June I discovered one descending to the ground by means of a thread.

We never saw the adults moths until today, when I discovered one drowned in one of Fred's pondwater samples.

A close-up picture shows the structure of the wings, which look like feathers

Some weeks ago I found another plume moth. I think this is Platyptilia pallidactyla. Yarrow is its food plant.

15th July 2009
This morning I found a pair of these plume moths mating in our garden.