Recent years have seen a broadening of the interests of many birders, with the bright and relatively easy-to-identify butterflies and dragonflies leading the way. More recently, macro-moths have started to figure, with MV traps lighting up many a garden. Interest in macro-moths particularly blossomed with the publication of Waring and Townsend’s Field Guide to the Moths which, with its plates of moths in natural resting positions, made the insects feel accessible to non-entomologists in a way they never had been before.
The field guide now has a new companion which will hopefully introduce many macro-only moth enthusiasts to the exciting, albeit sometimes daunting, world of the micro-moth.
The book opens with a 40-page introduction which covers many useful topics for someone new to micro-lepidoptera. There is the usual piece on the anatomy of the moth, but also a section on confusion insects that just happen to look like moths. Most helpfully, there is a well-illustrated key to the families, and even a very accessible ‘at a glance’ guide to them.
The bulk of the book is given over to detailed species accounts, each of which comes complete with a distribution map. The text is also enriched by a good number of photographs of larva, leaf mines and larval webs. However, the tour-de-force is Richard Lewington’s contribution, his superb plates being well up to his usual exceptional standards. The book finishes with a checklist of all the British micro-lepidoptera.
There are inevitable limitations. Not all species are covered. Those excluded are largely very rare or, more often, where large numbers of species look almost identical. When recording ‘micros’, the observer must check the text to see what is excluded as well as what is included. Caution in identification will also have to be exercised to some extent, as some species that can be extremely variable are frequently illustrated by a single example.
Nonetheless, with so much information contained in a single book, this new guide is a huge leap forward in making micros accessible to a wider public.
• A Field Guide to the Micro Moths of Great Britain and Ireland by Phil Stirling and Mark Parsons, illustrated by Richard Lewington (British Wildlife Publishing, 2012, Gillingham).
• 416 pages, more than 1,400 colour photos and illustrations, 900 colour distribution maps.
• ISBN 9780956490216. Pbk, £29.95. Birdwatch Bookshop from £26.95.
