{"id":32668,"date":"2024-08-17T11:24:02","date_gmt":"2024-08-17T09:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?p=32668"},"modified":"2024-08-17T11:24:03","modified_gmt":"2024-08-17T09:24:03","slug":"the-least-scarce-moth-is-the-scarce-silver-y","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/?p=32668","title":{"rendered":"The least scarce moth is the Scarce Silver Y"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32670\" src=\"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/SkogmetallflyP1980353-768x486-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"486\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/SkogmetallflyP1980353-768x486-1.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/SkogmetallflyP1980353-768x486-1-300x190.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/SkogmetallflyP1980353-768x486-1-640x405.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><br \/>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 (<em>Syngrapha interrogationis<\/em>) 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 &#8211; 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 (r\u00f8sslyng, bl\u00e5b\u00e6r og blokkeb\u00e6r) although a Swedish page mentions that they can also live on birch; see <a href=\"https:\/\/vilkenart.se\/Art.aspx?Namn=Syngrapha%20interrogationis\">https:\/\/vilkenart.se\/Art.aspx?Namn=Syngrapha%20interrogationis<\/a><br \/>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 <em>Buddleja davidii<\/em> in full flower.\u00a0 I haven&#8217;t yet seen them on the Buddleja, but I found at least one picture of this species on Buddleja, see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lepidoptera.no\/omrade\/?a_id=1018865\">https:\/\/www.lepidoptera.no\/omrade\/?a_id=1018865<\/a>, 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.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-32671\" src=\"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/P8177231.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/P8177231.jpg 800w, http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/P8177231-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/P8177231-768x576.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/P8177231-640x480.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/>At the same time there are less than normal numbers of its cousin silver y (gammafly) and large yellow underwing (hageb\u00e5ndfly) 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!<br \/><br \/><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1406],"tags":[1478,4922,1530,5132,5131,3201,4191,5129,4190,5130,4218,4175,4219,5128,510],"class_list":["post-32668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butterflies-and-moths","tag-bilberries","tag-biodiversity","tag-blabaer","tag-blokkebaer","tag-bog-bilberry","tag-gammafly","tag-hagebandfly","tag-heather","tag-large-yellow-underwing","tag-rosslyng","tag-scarce-silver-y","tag-silver-y","tag-skogmetallfly","tag-syngrapha-interrogationis","tag-the-edible-garden"],"views":913,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32672,"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32668\/revisions\/32672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edimentals.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}