Hotly Tipped

Craig at the LDV kindly leant me some pheromone lures to check out some of the Ouse valley sites for clearwing moths. They are every bit as beautiful as they are enigmatic and until the availability of artificial sex pheromone lures, they were very difficult to see and went mostly unrecorded. Female moths use pheromones to attract a mate, and the little males can detect tiny quantities of this potent perfume from a great distance. Scientists have developed synthetic species-specific pheromones which are now commercially available. Clearwings are well-named, lacking scales on most of their wings, meaning they are transparent, apart from some coloured patches. They are day-flying and related to the burnet moths and are said to mimic wasps in order to reduce predation. 

I had a walk round a village loop and put out Craig's Currant Clearwing lure near the old allotments and then my own Lunar Hornet Clearwing lure by the river. Checking back after a little while and I was surprised to see several clearwings around the first lure. The presence of an obvious red belt excluded the expected Currant Clearwing, and the presence of vivid red wing-tips, showed them to be Red-tipped Clearwings. Fantastic! I then realised I'd put the wrong lure out, so it was hardly surprising I'd attracted this species. After getting a couple of pics, I put the lure back in the pot, to allow the little males to go about their business and track down a real female, not a rubber bung hung on a bit of string! I checked down by the river, but sadly no Lunar Hornets had appeared. Maybe another day!