moth for id, high quality photos inside

[thes3raph1m]

found this bruiser flying around my living room, managed to catch it and got some (hopefully good photos)

now i know in some of the photos it looks dead, its not, its just very cold to make it still and i warmed it up periodically to make sure it didn't die or anything and before i came to upload these i made sure it was flying so... its cool.

anyway, i think its an orange underwing, ive matched the colour of the photos to the plate underneath so the colours you see (i shoot in raw and convert to jpg) are the colours i saw (or at least pretty close, the plate should be off white and ever so slightly closer to the yellows than the blues in terms of spectrum)

ive got the raw's if anyone wants them ill put them in a public dropbox as they are 19mb each and i dont want to use up the WAB's bandwidth too much, hence the jpg's.

some of these might be duplicates, some are merely a second or third similar shot with a slightly different center of DOF, ive had problems with the batch uploader tonight, only letting on one or two at a time so i apologise for those.

[RobSutton]

It's a Poplar Hawkmoth - they have a very characteristic way of resting (with the hindwings projecting way beyond the forewings) that your photographs show very nicely. The Orange Underwing is a very much smaller moth with the forewings up to 2cm long whereas the Poplar Hawkmoth has a forewing length of up to 4.5cm so at least twice as big.

Here's an Orange Underwing from the Gallery:



and for comparison a Poplar Hawkmoth:

[Jason Claxton]

Hi Thes3raph1m

They are nice photos of a Poplar Hawkmoth.


...Rob just beat me to it there

Jason.

[RobSutton]

Originally Posted by Jason Claxton

Hi Thes3raph1m

They are nice photos of a Poplar Hawkmoth.


...Rob just beat me to it there

Jason.

I see someone else is on the early morning WAB shift!

[thes3raph1m]

thanks guys, when i first saw it last night, i honestly thought it was a bat as it flew straight toward me.

the road right next to my flat is called "poplar road" so i agree its a poplar hawkmoth... im glad actually, i really wanted it to be a hawk moth and it is.

quite a heavy xexexexexexe too... weighed at least 15g and sounds like a tractor when it buzzes past your ear.

every night i get upwards of 10 moths in my flat, and a few nocturnal wasps as well as lacewings and spiders.

i love living within walking distance of 3 heavily wooded areas.

hurrah for the suburbs.