We had a "herd" of these in our garden yesterday - we live on the fens near Lincoln. Please could somebody tell us what they are as they are not in our book.
Thanks. Rosie
Sunday, June 21, 2009
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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.
The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.
2 comments:
These are longhorn moths, family Adelidae, one of the moth families which has day-active species in it.
The reason you won't easily be able to find pictures of them in books on moths is twofold; firstly as "micromoths" most books don't cover them, being concerned only with the larger moths, and secondly entomology books have a standard layout for insects which for moths is with the wings pinned in a stretched-out position.
In life, the moths never rest like this and the wings-outstretched pose is only ever seen in flying moths, and only then if you're pretty handy with a camera.
This sort of life to dead specimen is quite common in entomology; many tropical species have a shimmer or sheen in life which fades rapidly when the insect dies, and dung beetles have antennae that in life have spread tips opened out like a fan, which in death always close up into a lump.
These look like the longhorn moth Nemophora degeerella. Incidentally, there is a good internet site for identifying moths at ukmoths.org.uk
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