Wednesday, 25 August 2021

Svensson's Copper Underwing

My sugaring post and butterfly feeder I posted about a couple of weeks back now has regular vistors butterflies, flies and wasps daytime and moths at night usualy on the sugar. Last night sitting out late sipping a beer or in the dark I thought I saw a moth hovering over the banannas in the tray and sure enough when I got the torch out I saw four moths of the same species feeding on the bananas. By the time I got the flash working on my phone two of the moths had flown off but dureing the course of the next 2 hours there were never less than 2 feeding. On netting one and checking it this morning I think its Svenssons Copper Underwing not Copper Underwing but I have since let if go as I have no interest in killing it just to satisfy my couriosity and even if I did it would only prove which species I dissected not what the others were. So as longer as Andy is okay I will record as copper underwing agg. The really interesting part of this sighting fore me was the fact they totally ingnored the sugar mix the whole time I was looking at them despite other species feeding on the sugar, the underwings only ever fed on Bananna and ignored the sugar and the scented plants below the feeder. I will try and look most nights now to see what takes bannanas in preference to the sugar mix.

1 comment:

David Sutcliffe said...

Very interesting - must give it a try though already getting up to 4 Copper Underwing agg last few nights!