Test your wits...

Tarantara!

Here is only the second competition in the blog's history. (The first was the Great Heart-and-Dart Guessing Game, mentioned a few posts below).

I wasn't planning this, but there was quite a good catch of hard-for-me-to-identify moths in the trap last night (the weather turning nice again, after a cold, wet snap). On a whim, I emailed pictures of eight of them to my local expert Charlie Fltcher and also Jax Westmoreland of Yorkshire Butterfly Conservation - fatally adding that "I am planning to identify them later."

Here is Charlie's reply, which is also the Second Grand Competition. I suppose I asked for it. I should and will try to puzzle it out myself, but all friendly readers and commentors are most welcome to join in. I promise not to look...

Over to Charlie:

Hi Martin

Another selection of nice brown moths I see!

As you are going to have a stab at solving them yourself, I won't identify them directly, but here are anagrams of the common names - or scientific names for the two micros:



3348 Hustled death-traps (this is the female)
3356 Becalm port commander
3359 Duckboard? Yes!
3366 Willowy gender granule
3370 Academia spanners
3372 Undershirt-lockouts
3377 Little moped wallow
3386 Iambic asparagus oil (I'm sure you use this in your cooking!)

And here are the moths (in the order given above) for competition fans to identify.

Happy brain-crunching! I will try to think of a nice prize for all who enter.

I really won't cheat, I swear. But they are brown and grey and quite difficult, don't you agree? Note that bit of blue on Moth No.4's wing btw. I'm very interested in that.

xM