Behold the adorableness of this nut-tree tussock moth and let your Monday be improved.
Moths are important pollinators who take over the night shift when bees go to bed. Look how fluffy it is - basically a tiny flying kitten that pollinates your garden!
Thank you from the Moth Promotional Board ✨🦋🐾🛹✨
The Herald is an unmistakable and friggin delightful moth.
They putter about early in the year, but not many stop by the light. Happy to see this little buddy drop in! Here's some sketches I made of this species.
Caterpillars of this mothy pal eat willows & poplars. The web of connections between trees, moths that eat the leaves, birds that eat moth larvae and live in trees, and all the other interconnected wildlife... It's so vast. If you enjoy seeing moths like this, take care of trees as much as you're able.
Thank you from the Moth Promotional Board ✨🦋🐾🛹✨
Politely requesting that you pause and behold the utterfuckingly delightful frosted green moth that visited me this morning.
Look at its little face! The stripey socks! So fluffy!! The world is on fire, but moths exist; see them and know there are still good things for you to keep existing for too.
The caterpillars of this moth eat oak leaves. Another reason to look after local street oaks, & protect even small areas of trees. Where I live, developers have been successfully taken to court for deliberately damaging protected oaks. So it's worth reporting damage!
Thank you from the Moth Promotional Board ✨🦋🐾🛹✨
From this morning's moth trap:
- Oak beauty
- Hebrew character
- Common quaker
- Common plume AKA set-square moth 📐🦋🐾
Look how fluffy and utterfuckingly delightful that oak beauty is. Those antennas! How do more people not love moths? It is a mystery.
Moth trapping is a way to track local populations and meet your neighbourhood moth pals. After recording all moths are released a safe distance away from the trap (read: out of the way of hungry birds that hang around by the trap shelter!)
Inside you are 2 hawkmoths...
The first is like "oh so u think all moths are dull and brown, eh?"
The second is all "why TF do you think brown = dull anyway, hmm?"
~
Small elephant hawkmoth and pine hawkmoth visitors to my moth trap. All moths were released unharmed (moth trapping is nice and non-lethal.)
If you enjoyed these moths, please consider not talking 💩 about moths, they're very good bugs. Moths are important pollinators (bees are the day shift, moths work nights.) Moths are an important part of food chains in many ecosystems. Thank you from the Moth Promotional Board ✨🦋✨
A warm and fuzzy heart & dart moth sending you hi fives for getting through the day 👋💖🦋
This moth eats 'weeds' like ribwort plantain. To help warm, fluffy, pollinating flying kittens like this one, please do less weeding. You don't need to pull those herbaceous friends out of your lawn, have a cup of tea and a sit down instead. Thank you from the Moth Promotional Board ✨ 🦋 ✨
First moth trap of the year! Look at these warm fuzzy flying kittens 🦋🐈
They are
- Early grey
- Hebrew character
- Common quaker
These moths eat various wild plants, trees & shrubs. Know who else likes trees? Birds.
Birds need moth caterpillars to feed to their chicks at this time of year. Moths & birds are linked. You gotta love one to love the other.
A lot of people will tell you they don't like moths. That they're boring. Some people even say they hate them. Few people say they hate garden birds. Or flowers that moths pollinate. I think people just need to get to know moths TBH.
But even if moths aren't for you?
Looking after moths will help birds & plants too. It's good for your local ecosystem as a whole.
& it often involves doing less work!
If you're lucky enough to have a garden, weeding less & leaving some dead leaves & stems around will help wildlife (especially invertebrates and things that eat them) generally. More tips here
Love moths. Do less.
Thank u from the Moth Promotional Board ✨🦋✨
Colour variation in chonky secret mustards AKA large yellow underwing moths AKA Noctua pronuba. It's still not the weather to put up the moth-trap shelter yet 😭 These chonks visited in the autumn.
Please remember to be kind to moths, and if you're in the UK like me; don't be too hasty to clear away dead leaves and winter foliage around the place. Moths are an important part of your local ecosystem. Right now moth caterpillars are a crucial baby bird food!
Thank you from the Moth Promotional Board ✨🦋✨
Moth season is coming friends - here in the UK it's still winter, but spring mothing time is just around the corner!
These fluffy flying kittens are some of the first moth friends I hope will be visiting this year
- Oak beauty
- Nut tree tussock
- Brindled beauty
- Brimstone moth
May your season be filled with all the good things and fluffy moths you need 💖🦋🌿
Please enjoy the delightful antennas of these male spongey moths while I wait for spring and moth season.
This species is a relatively infrequent visitor in my area of the UK. In some countries/regions it's considered a pest on trees, but it's not reportable here - so these glorious beasts went on their way after I logged their visits
May we all have moments of looking this magnificent 💖🦋
It's Monday. Please enjoy this moth and its delightful hyaline wing-windows 🦋💖
I couldn't find an English language common name for this species, so I made one up (it apparently feeds on durian foliage.)
Invertebrate friends, if you know any other common names for this species in any languages you could translate for me, please let me know!
It's not moth season here yet. But here's a species I drew because I wanted to see it 1 day... & Then last summer it did actually drop by my moth trap to say hi!
Blotched emerald moth, a beautiful species that feeds on oak leaves 💚
You may not think you love moths. "I prefer bigger flappy things like birds" you might say. But listen... Birds feed moth caterpillars to their chicks. Some much-loved garden birds rely on these caterpillars to feed their young, and time their egg-incubating accordingly. Love birds? Then you need to love moths. Sorry, I don't make the rules.
Thank you from the Moth Promotional Board ✨🦋✨
It was the year of the flower crab spider. These were all in the garden in Cochise County, Arizona, in September 2023.
You have to love the 'free-hugs-😈' pose that crab spiders always seem to have
