Martin Clay Photography: Garden Beasts

As I mentioned in earlier posts, finding wildlife to photograph at the moment seems to be a real struggle. It is far easier when it comes to you! My sisters boyfriend just so happens to be a National Park Ranger on the South Downs. And just so happened to have a brand spanking new moth trap in the cupboard ready to be loaned to someone that will use it!

So set up on the lawn on a saturday night, with enough light given off to attract some extra terrestrial life forms, we went to bed happy in the knowledge that there were already several moths inside. Having said that, that particular saturday night happened to involve a fair few drinks and rising from our beds on sunday morning wasn't quite so easy.

Once up and awake, as complete amateurs in hind sight moving the trap to the shade might have been a good idea, hence when removing the lid in bright warm sunshine we lost a lot of the smaller moths. However a fair few of the bigger species did remain, and happily arranged themselves for my camera on a log. I didn't note all the species as I soon got carried away with Photographing them, but I do remember a fair few. From what I can remember we had 2 Elephant Hawk-Moth (Deilephila Elpenor), 3 Poplar Hawk-Moth (Laothoe Populi), 1 Privet Hawk Moth (Sphinx Ligustri), 2 Dot Moth (Melanchra Persicariae), 4 Buff Ermine (Spilosoma Luteum), 1 Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua Pronuba) & 1 Herald (Scoliopteryx Libatrix).

All in all something I had never done before, and to be perfectly honest never knew most of the species existed and could be that big and were some really amazing colours and camouflages.