Beautiful Plume Moth

John C. writes:

Getting home quite late from a nocturnal ramble to look (actually to listen for) for crickets with bat detectors, I noticed an unusual plume moth on the inside of the bathroom window.

She/he had to be photographed and identified. It was obviously a plume moth and with the help of the UKMoths website, my best identification is that she/he was a Beautiful Plume moth, Amblyptilia acanthadactyla, although as always I’m prepared to be corrected. But I think it lives up to it’s name even though it’s only about 15 mm across – small is often beautiful, although the pictures don’t do it justice.

It fluttered off the window and I managed to get another photo. The interesting and – to me – unusual thing is the ‘spurs’ on the second and third pairs of legs. I wonder what they are for.

As for our nocturnal ramble, we heard many speckled and dark bush-crickets although we failed to find any dark bush-crickets after a lot of searching by torch light in the dense vegetation (which they seem to favour) on roadside verges. Very frustrating, although we did hear, and also glimpse, plenty of bats feeding over the Windrush.

John Cobb, August 28 2022

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