Back from the UK and the first night I put out the moth trap on 15th / 16th August (they are released again) I was surprised to find that scarce silver Y moths / skogmetallfly (Syngrapha interrogationis) were everywhere and a count yielded 53 moths of this species. My previous highest count was 22 in August 2022, so I wondered how unusual this was. A quick check on our national species reporting database artsobservasjoner.no and it turns out this was the highest number ever recorded in Norway – next highest was 50 in 1997 in southern Norway and then 25 in Namsos, north of here. This is a moorland species and the larvae live on heather, bilberry and bog bilberry (røsslyng, blåbær og blokkebær) although a Swedish page mentions that they can also live on birch; see https://vilkenart.se/Art.aspx?Namn=Syngrapha%20interrogationis
This is a regular visitor in my garden in small numbers and both the high counts were made with the moth trap very close to a large Buddleja davidii in full flower. I haven’t yet seen them on the Buddleja, but I found at least one picture of this species on Buddleja, see https://www.lepidoptera.no/omrade/?a_id=1018865, so I guess this is what is attracting them as my garden is a few kilometres away from its moorland habitat, unless they have adopted birch in the garden.
At the same time there are less than normal numbers of its cousin silver y (gammafly) and large yellow underwing (hagebåndfly) both of which frequent the Buddleja, sometimes in large numbers! Scarce silver Y is largely a night flyer as is large yellow underwing whereas silver Y flies both night and day!
Tag Archives: gammafly
Peak butterflies
There are record numbers of butterflies in the garden at the moment, crowding on the last Buddleja flowers. A few days ago, I counted 35 butterflies, about equal numbers of painted ladies (tistelsommerfugl) and red admirals (admiral) with a few small tortoiseshells (neslesommerfugl) as well as a lot of silver y moths (gammafly). All are seen in this video taken from my balcony which overlooks the largest Buddleja.
Bees and other pollinators on edimentals
I’ve been observing edimentals liked by the bees over the last week…and the winners are the following genera: Allium, Cirsium, Papaver, Trifolium, Dictamnus, Knautia, Campanula, Codonopsis and Aquilegia
I only need to find the time to get out Tor Bollingmo’s (Norwegian) book and attempt to identify the bee species!
I only need to find the time to get out Tor Bollingmo’s (Norwegian) book and attempt to identify the bee species!