Small Insects attracted to Light
/Especially in the summer moths, there are often a lot of small insects in the light trap along with the moths. Sadly these are mostly quite short-lived insects and are often dead or dying when you check the trap in the morning.
Water Veneer moths live only a couple of days. In June/July the winged males gather in large swarms to mate and are drawn to light. Females come in winged and flightless forms. These moths are aquatic, the males and flightless females mate at thew water’s surface, while the larvae live in slow-moving water where they feed on pond weed. the moths do fly quite far from water, so despite being quite far from any large pond or river I still caught 35 individuals at the weekend. The waterboatmen and long-horned caddisflies are also aquatic species that venture quite far from water and are attracted to light. The two caddisflies are both long-horned, which has a morph with patterned wings and a rarer one with plain ones.
The leaf-hoppers, close relatives of grasshoppers, are from closer afield in the nearby trees. There are a lot of similar looking leaf-hopper species and I was unable to find a good match in order to identify them. As well as these there were a few aphids and midges found their way into the trap.
