Ugly sister

It's a mean thing to say and my soft-hearted granddaughter chided me for saying it, but one of the latest arrivals in the moth trap deserves the title of the ugliest species in the UK. Although a micro-moth, it is large and brutish-looking and its habits are in keeping.

Like a cuckoo's nestling, the caterpillar feeds on beeswax provided by its hosts and its surroundings give it its name of the Wax moth. Scientifically, it is Galleria mellonella and it is much more often found in the South and Midlands than in the North. Beekeepers dislike it greatly because of its ravaging of their honeycomb and I admit that if I had to choose between a wax moth and honeycomb, I would definitely go for the latter.

My next new arrival, below, is also a very large micro but a much prettier one. It first featured on this blog when the same granddaughter found it in her east London garden almost a year before it got to me. But it has an ugly reputation. It's a Box-tree or Boxworm moth, Cydalima perspectalis, an invasive species  which doesn't even get a proper entry in the micro-moth Bible, published in 2012, though the first British record was from Kent in 2007.  It has spread with great vigour and is causing havoc for the country's owners of box hedges who unfortunately include the guardians of many fine gardens and stately homes. Look it up  on Google and the usual precedence accorded to moth ID sites such as the excellent Nature Spot takes a very definite second place to gardening and pest control web pages. As with the Wax moth, it is the caterpillar which does all the damage.

In the world of macro moths, meanwhile, the children's week here has coincided with some interesting arrivals as well as delicious weather. Below are some of the 'New for the Year' crew:  

 Treble Bar - very like the Lesser Treble Bar but I think this is the plain and simple TB

A fine-looking moth: the Oak Hook-tip (male)

And here it is again, showing further similarities to a stealth fighter

And finally, a Small Waved Umber

There's quite a lot more in my knapsack but I'll stop for now, other than to show you a cheeky spider which must have known that my oldest grandson is (a) a fan of vehicles of all kinds and (b) tremendously interested in cobwebs: