It promised to be a perfect mothing night, moonless, warm, and dead calm, but I hadn’t reckoned on those ?*&$# beetles. They descended on the light in swarms, covering the sheet and falling inches deep around the light that I had on a chair because I forgot part of the gear…. Beetles in the hair, inside the shirt, in the boots, nearly unbearable. However with patience and perseverance I stuck it out and got some interesting records.
In the background a Boobook was calling, very appropriate because the first interesting creature that came to the light was one I had never seen before. At first I thought it was a dragonfly, but then I saw the long clubbed feelers. As I found out later it was an Owlfly, and what a fabulous insect it is. Owlflies are Neuropterans, or net-winged insects, related to lacewings, and antlions that they most closely resemble, several of which also showed up. The adults are aerial predators while the larvae hunt for their prey on the forest floor.
It was possibly the most moth-poor night I’ve put in, maybe due to the low humidity, but the few that did favour me with a visit were interesting. I’ve had one of the lichen moths, Asura lydia at the location before, but on this night I got the other Victorian in the genus, Asura cervicalis.
Hepialids are always good to get, a female Elhamma australasiae came to the light, a very plain moth compared to the males.
Two plume moths came, one I’ve had many times, Platyptilia celidotus, but the other was new to me, quite a striking plume, Stangeia xerodes. Both moths are very small, wingspan of about half an inch. Amongst other things the larvae of Stangeia feed on young wattle shoots, plenty of which are in the vicinity.
While many moths are pest species in that their larvae damage plants of one kind or another, the last in this post is beneficial. Its name is a bit of a mouthful, Stathmopoda melanochroa, the larvae are carnivorous and feed on scale insects. It has been introduced into New Zealand to control scale in eucalypt plantations. My info came from Don Herbison-Evans’ excellent site.
Click to enlarge.
