Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Abberations and forms

Dean's great photo of a Water Carpet f.porrittii this evening got me thinking about the various forms and abberations of moths that I've seen over the years. Not that many to be honest, once you exclude the species that are prone to wide variation within the general population. Here's a few that I managed to find old photos of without trawling too deeply through the badly archived archives ....

Blood-vein, Enderby Quarry 13th June 2004
This one is referable to f. nigra, and as far as I can gather it's pretty rare.

Dotted Border, Whetstone 17th April 2003
This is referable to f. fuscata, a fairly common form, but the only one I remember seeing that was this dark.

Lime Hawk-moth, Wicken Fen 18th May 2002
This is referable to f. brunnea, again the only one I remember seeing.

Brimstone Moth, Luffenham Heath Golf Course 14th June 2003
No idea if this is a named form, or a genuinely abberant individual, but certainly the only one I've ever seen.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some cracking forms there, Mark. Particularly like the Lime Hawk & Brimstone.

Bennyboymothman said...

The Blood-vein is great as is Brimstone! that form of Lime Hawk use to crop up alot in my old garden.

Katie (Nature ID) said...

I've been enjoying your moth posts, but have not been commenting much. So, thanks for posting!

Tom Tams said...

Cracking images, love to see these forms and abberations

Cheers

Tom

Skev said...

Thanks all. Hopefully the wind will drop soon so I can get the traps out again; we should see moth diversity increase within a few days.