Two Ormsaigbeg Moths

It's a privilege of the Diary's life to be able to wander around looking for strange and interesting beasties and then to spend time trying to capture good pictures of them.  Moths are fascinating for their variety, but hugely frustrating as they tend not to hang around particularly as, being small, one has to manoeuvre the camera very close to get a good shot.  So it's very satisfying to succeed, as in this case, with a very small moth, just over 1cm across, which landed on a piece of wire fencing by Craigard croft.  It's a yellow shell, Camptogramma bilineata, but who really cares - it's beautiful.

This spectacularly patterned, much larger moth goes by the strange name of a 'silver y', Autographa gamma.  The 'y' comes, apparently, from the 'y' on it's wing.  It's an immigrant from the shores of the Mediterranean, though how something as small as this - it's about 3cm across, can fly those sort of distances is beyond the Diary's comprehension.

From the side it has a strange topknot.  It's colouring is such that, had it not flown up when disturbed, it would have been impossible to spot.  It was found on the ridge at the back of Ormsaigbeg.