I spent an hour or so in the woods last evening from 4pm looking for seasonal moths. There are not many species on the wing at this time of year but one such moth is the aptly named Winter Moth
, Operophtera brumata. The females do not fly possessing only short stubby wings. The males can be found in numbers resting on tree trunks as they scan for female pheromones. Eggs are laid in cracks on the tree bark and overwinter hatching in the spring. I found more than a hundred males, many only just emerged, and no doubt many more did so after I left. I managed to photograph a few mating pairs which shows the variation in the markings of the females. The males also exhibit a fair degree of variation in intensity of marking and size
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