Introductory page to the moths in our garden with lots of pictures.

Moths

All pictures of garden wildlife on this page are thumbnails. Click on a thumbnail for enlargement in format of 800x600 pixels. The enlarged photos are from 100 to 150KB in size. We normally use the animal's English name (if it has one). However the scientific name of the species is always mentioned in the photograph's captions. For some species an additional page containing more pictures is available.

Thanks to Colin Hart (UK), Mike Wall (UK), Andy Mitchell (UK), Eddy Verfaillie (B), Jeroen de Rond (NL), Date Lutterop (NL), Olivier Freak (B), Fredy de Wilde (NL), Isabelle Guerin (F), Jeroen Voogd (NL), Keith Edkins (UK), Marc Meyers (LUX), Joska Angyal (NL), Steve Holmes (UK), Han Klein Schiphorst (NL) and Cun Wijnen (NL) for identifying some species. And I like to thank all those enthousiasts at the wonderful Yahoo group UKMoths as well: Nigel Jones, Nick Greatorex-Davies and all others. This group is a big help for both beginners and more advanced moths friends and their absolutely foreign friendly.

Our original Moths Page got too big. Especially surfers using a modem had to wait a long time for the page to load. In March we decided to cut the original page into several new shorter pages. We also added an introductory page on the Lepidoptera. If you are looking for a particular species or family of flies, please use the picture navigation at the top of the page, or our search engine at the bottom of this page, or make your choice below:

1 Woolly Bears and Footmen, 2 Geometer Worms, 3 Owlet Moths, 4 Remaining macroes, such as Prominents, 5 Leaf-roller Moths, also known as Tortrixes, 6 Moths having weird wings, such as Clear Wings and Plume Moths, 7 Snout Moths, also known as Pyralids, 8 Remaining microes, such as Concealer Moths, House Moths and Longhorn Moths.

Introduction to moths

Like butterflies moths are Lepidoptera, a huge group of insects. Some 120,000 species are known to man, but there is little doubt that perhaps the same number of species is still waiting to be discovered. All lepidoptera have rather large wings covered with scales and some species are without any doubt among the most beautiful creatures on earth. For a very long time now the group has been split up in two: butterflies and moths. The differences between the two groups are among others the fact that the two wings of the moths are connected, which is not the case in butterflies. To the eye there is another striking difference: the way the antennae are constructed. All butterflies have long, thin antennae with a little knob on top. Some moths also have a wire like antenna, but it never has the knob on top! Most moths however have antennae which are more complicated: some look like combs, others like brushes and some are five times as long as the insects body. Yet another difference is in the colouring. Even though some moths are beautifully coloured, most are plain, brownis grey or greyish brown. This gives them a good camouflage when resting during the day, for most moths are nocturnal animals. Butterflies are often very colourful. Often the underside of the wing differs from the upperside very much. By regularly opening and closing their wings, enemies can't get a visual hold of the body and do not know where to attack.

If you can't tell the difference by looking at the colour, try the antennae. A wire with a knob on top? Then it is a butterfly, like the orangetip to the left. Any other shape belongs to a moth like the comblike antenna on the Pale Oak Beauty to the right.

Even though all butterflies fly by day, not all moths fly just by night. There are many species that love to fly in the sunshine, often the more beautiful species. The well known Silver Y Moth is one of them. Each summer it travels from Africa to Europe in great numbers. It is a brownish owlet that mingles with the butterflies and hover flies visiting the flowers in your garden. The clearwings also fly by day. Their body is black interrupted by yellow stripes. Their wings lose most of the scales during the very first flight, making them transparent. In this way they mimic wasps, a very good protection, for most enemies will not attack a wasp voluntarily. Such a mimic however only works during the daytime and thus these moths always fly by day only.

Two moths that are active during hours of daylight: the Silver Y to the left and the clearwing to the right.

In the tropics some moths are really huge and in Europe some species are quite impressive as well. Some of the hawk-moths may reach 13 centimetres (or 5.2") across. The majority of the moths however doesn't even reach two centimetres (or 0.8"). Even in Western-Europe (including Britain) there are thousands of very small species. Many of those are hard to identify and most look quite similar. Just like most butterflies many moths have very long tongues, which are rolled up when not in use. They can only take in liquid food, such as nectar from flowers, or juices from ripe or rotting fruit. The mebers of a few families of extremely primitive moths still have useable jaws, which they use crushing pollen. On the other hand lots of adult moths don't even eat at all. Their mouth parts are reduced and they live on the energy they stuffed being a caterpillar. Most of these caterpillars are vegetarians: they eat plants, preferably leaves. The smallest species mine leaves. This means they live inside the leaf, eating it from the inside, just like the smallest larvae of some beetles, wasps and flies do. Bigger species live in trees or shrubs, munching away at the leaves. Some larvae however live deep inside wood or in stems and roots of various plants. A few species however live on dead materials, such as feathers and hairs. You can find them in old bird's nests etc. In Western-Europe there is just one carnivore: the dun-bar, an owlet moth. Its caterpillars hunt for the caterpillars of other moths, especially tortrixes.

The caterpillars of these two species are not vegetarians. The caterpillar of the White-shouldered House Moth to the left eats wool, while the caterpillar of the Dun-bar to the right is a hunter.

Moths are often split up into two groups: the macrolepidoptera and the microlepidoptera. There is no real scientific basis to this distinction, but it has been around for centuries now. Even the scientists (lepidopterists) often specialize themselves in one of the two. To avoid the discussions that took place in the past, there is a database containing all moth families dividing them in microes and macroes. When you see a moth it is often very unclear to which group it belongs. Most species less than 2 centimetres across are microes, though. Still some families do present you with a problem. Quite a few owlets are very small indeed, like the Common Rustic, measuring some 28 millimetres (1.10"), yet the whole family belongs to the macroes. Some pyralids on the other hand, such as the Small Magpie Moth are about the same size and look even bigger because of their huge wings, but still are considered to be microes.

These two moths are both some 3 centimetres across, yet the Common Rustic to the left is a macro and the Small Magpie Moth is a micro.

Also visit Hania's Photographer's Pages, including pictures from Holland, Germany, China, the USA and Malaysia.