Brown Plume

Brown Plume, Stenoptilia pterodactyla.  High Elms Country Park, 21 July 2012.

This is one of the less usual types of moth, though some species are quite common and easily disturbed during the day.  It is a plume moth, so called because the wings are rolled up at rest and sometimes look more like feathers than moth wings.

From this viewpoint they look more like an airplane's wings .. but they actually have quite a fringe of hairs along their edges, as you can see here:

Brown Plume, Stenoptilia pterodactyla.  High Elms Country Park, 21 July 2012.

They open up to normal wings when the creature flies.

I collected this moth in a little plastic pot and took it home to photograph it.  It was quite cooperative, as you can see.  Then I let it go.  Was it a coincidence that one of this species turned up in my garden moth trap that night?   Perhaps not ...