8 January 2015 - New for Yorkshire Region - and Billy Collins Haiku

(Calybites phasianipennella)

This slight and highly decorative insect flew into the trap in the Museum Gardens in York last July where it was identified as (Calybites phasianipennella) and posted on the blog.  What we didn't know was that it hadn't been recorded in this neck of the woods before.  For statistical purposes, Yorkshire is divided into five separate areas VC61-VC65 and the Museum Gardens is in VC62.  Had I been recording the species directly into the database (MapMate) rather than using a written list, the fact that Calybites was new to that region would have been immediately apparent. (I had been putting off using MapMate as it is anything but simple.)  Thanks to Charlie Fletcher's end-of-the-year checking of the species lists that had been submitted, followed by searching questions and requesting photographic evidence, we discovered, just this week, that Calybites was a first.
An excellent start to the year.

Marbled Beauty (Cryphia domestica)

Posting the news of Calybites gives the opportunity to introduce the idea of observing moths in a slightly different way.  To give each species of moth its correct common and scientific name is not an easy thing to do and requires close observation.  Some species are straightforward and cannot really be incorrectly identified (Ghost Moth, Scarce Silver-lines, Poplar Hawk-moth, for example) while others are extremely variable.  Arriving in the trap cloaked in different shades of brown or sometimes losing or gaining patterns and markings, the amateur has to rely on the knowledge of the experienced moth-trapper.  My referees are Dave Chesmore and Charlie Fletcher and were it not for their help the list of 360 species at Shandy Hall would be far from accurate.

However, show a moth to a writer of haiku (that precise and condensed form of poetic expression) and other possibilities arise.

The haiku below (written for the Marbled Beauty moth above) is by Billy Collins (American Poet Laureate 2001-2003) and is one of a number written specially for a project with The Laurence Sterne Trust.

Marbled Beauty
In your grey and white
wings, is there one face
or one for every viewer?

3 July 2014 - Little Slender

(Calybites phasianipennella)

Calybites phasianipennella is a very small moth; a very little, slender moth, which (if the scientific name is anything to go by) lives in a hut and looks like a pheasant.  The cone of silk the caterpillar spins for its protection refers to the 'hut' (like a yurt, perhaps?), but the pheasant connection is rather more difficult to understand.  Those outrageous roadside sentinels are blazing with purples and reds at the moment, but Calybites' colouring looks quite discreet. 
Little Slender (for that is its colloquial name), was one of three micro moths trapped in the gardens at the Yorkshire Museum last night and those members of the public who stopped, on their way to work, to look at the 'catch' found it difficult to believe that something so small, that could barely be seen, could indeed be a moth.  Here it is under a macro lens.  It is not glimpsed very often as it spends up to nine months hibernating or overwintering.  The antennae wave almost constantly, sensing and investigating the air.

(Crambus perlella) 

Another micro from the YO1 area last night was a Crambus perlella - the Yellow Satin Veneer - here shown in a collecting tube and looking every bit as terrifying as Hirst's shark.
The scientific name means 'dry' or 'withered pearl'.  The moth can be found on grassland, gardens and heathland and is quite common.  
We are still trying to identify the third micro and will post when we find out.