The first session for the year at home drew in a lot of moths from the native garden, with some surprises among them. The first moth to the sheet was a Bogong Moth, a welcome sight as there has been a big decline in the species. Encouragingly there have been numbers of moths located at some of their traditional summer haunts in the high country, let’s hope that the Mountain Pygmy Possums find enough to sustain them and nourish breeding females. One of the surprises on this night was several very nice Woodland Geometrids, Cryphaea xylina (Nacophorini) coming into the light, a first for the location.
January is the main flight month for the Yellow-tailed Stub Moth, Discophlebia catocalina (Oenosandridae), and true to form, several appeared.
Another first was the record of two Clania ignobilis, (Psychidae), males, the females are wingless. Both moths refused to settle and spent the entire night fluttering up the sheet, so all photos were of moving moths. The wings are translucent and easily loose their scales as can be seen with the images showing almost clear wings. The extended prehensile abdomen can be seen in the second shot.
Possibly the most often observed moth from the garden is the Common Bark Moth, Ectropis excursaria (Boarmiini). these two shots show some of the variation.
One emerald for the night, Chlorocoma stereota, (Geometrinae)
To be continued, most images will enlarge.