The first national moth distribution maps for 30 years have been published by Moths Count in this new book, which sold out the first print run in just a few weeks!

Fortunately it’s now been reprinted and is available again. Check out the details on the Moths Count website.

Representing over 11 million records of over 860 moth species, it’s currently priced at £20 plus £5 p+p. Proceeds go towards further moth conservation projects.

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The new Moths and Butterflies  of Britain and Ireland app for the iPhone platform is now available!  The app, developed by Birdguides Ltd in conjunction with A&C Black and UKMoths is based on Chris Manley’s “British Moths and Butterflies – a photographic guide“, and features additional content from the UKMoths website and distribution maps from Butterfly Conservation’s National Moth Recording Scheme.

Covering a total of 2,147 species of lepidoptera found in Britain and Ireland, the app features stunning photos of most of the British micro and macro-lepidoptera (including butterflies), along with a selection of larvae, pupae, eggs, leafmines and other feeding signs.

FEATURES:

• Beautiful photos showcasing the wealth and variety of lepidoptera in Britain and Ireland
• Display all species, or choose from a combination of macros, micros and butterflies
• Order alphabetically or taxonomically
• Choose to display only macros, butterflies or micros as you prefer
• Confusion species are suggested where appropriate
• Online access to UKMoths photos and texts
• Distribution data from the National Biodiversity Network (since 2000) when online
• When not online, the app covers 1693 species

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Elephant Hawk-moth Caterpillar

Hi everyone,

It’s that time  of the year when the Elephant Hawk-moth caterpillars are out and about in numbers. At this time of year they’re often found wandering around looking for somewhere to pupate, or are in peoples’ gardens munching away at their Fuschias!

There are two forms – the more typical brown form, and a bright green form which is somewhat less common but perhaps more easily noticed.

If you’ve found a big, smooth caterpillar with a curved horn at the rear and false ‘eyes’ at the front, there’s a good chance it’s this species.

See http://www.ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?id=240 for more information.

Filed under: News by Ian

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Sorry all,

I was doing some database maintenance work this evening (8 June) and I managed to break the site so that none of the species pages, search routines or systematic lists were working.

Apologies to all those who were affected, and thanks for everyone for sending me photos of species apparently not featured (which was everything for a while!)

The site should be OK again now (23:45 hrs 8 June).  I was doing some work to try to ratify the systematic sort order, as things have changed significantly since the publication of the original Bradley and Fletcher ‘logbook’ which is how the species are ordered at the moment.

Watch this space, as there should be an update fairly soon once I get my head around it…

Cheers,

Ian.

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This year, National Moth Night will be held on the 15th May and will celebrate Moths and Bats.

Read more at national-moth-night

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The new thumbnail format

I’ve just finished a revamp of the thumbnail display pages.  The thumbnail images have been bothering me for a while, and because the moth photos themselves come in all shapes and sizes, I’d used a kind of “35 mm slide” background to make them all the same square shape for layout purposes.  This was beginning to look a bit dated, and recently I discovered a neat little utility for creating thumbnails on the fly, TimThumb.

With a bit of tweaking, this now creates thumbnails on the fly for all the different pages that use them, if that thumbnail doesn’t already exist.

The nice thing about TimThumb is that it can crop the original image to the required size and shape, so I can use square thumbnails on the species pages and rectangular ones on the thumbnail view and search pages for example. The new thumbnails as a result are bigger and more useful than the old.

The old style thumbnails

Filed under: Site Updates by Ian

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Moths have made it into the political news recently, with Labour MP Graham Allen’s allegations that Michael Gove, a Conservative MP, introduced a moth infestation into the House of Commons when he brought a second-hand Moroccan carpet into the building.

See the BBC News post here.

The post mentions “the common household moth”, which apparently “enjoys upholstery and clothing as well as carpets”.

Presumably the likely suspect is the Case-bearing Clothes Moth, Tinea pellionella, but coming from Morocco, who knows?!…

Filed under: Moths in the News by Ian

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Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the new UKMoths News and Information service, launched to coincide with the site reaching 2000 moth species online!

The species uploaded to reach that magical 2000 figure was Udea alpinalis, contributed by Martin Bishop:

Filed under: News| Site Updates by Ian

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