Snow and a few more August moths

The snow of last week has cleared and temperatures should reach the low 20’s Celsius for most of this week.  However, after 15cm of snow, severe frosts, temperatures as low as –4 and untold tree and damage I was quite surprised to find any moths in my light and bait traps trap this morning.  There was a single macro moth in my light trap yesterday but 5 moths of 5 species this morning.  I will blog about todays moths in a later post but here are a few more moths from the balmy days of August…

August – A good month for Underwings

With snow and temperatures barely above freezing, here in Calgary, the high temperatures of August already seem like a distant memory.  August was certainly my best month on record for Underwings.  On the 15th, 13 Underwings of 4 species in the bait trap was a record for my backyard.  I don’t think I’ve had any Underwings in the light trap this year but the bait trap has been very productive.  I’m not sure if it made a real difference but this was the first year that I used Pineapple.  Other ingredients were banana, grapes, a dash of maple syrup and any other fruit that came to hand… Actually, described like that it almost sounds like a nice desert recipe!  

The following are the 5 species of Underwing that  I have seen in my backyard this year.  The moth that I believe is a Once-married Underwing Moth (Catocala unijuga) was definitely the largest Underwing that I have seen.