Size of a moth!

Every moth-er gradually develops an instinctive eye for what “normal” looks like after handling hundreds, if not thousands, of moths each season. An Elephant Hawk-moth should be about this big. A Silver Y about that big. Most individuals fall comfortably within those expectations. Every so often you find an unusually large or unusually small specimen, but they’re exceptions. This year has felt different. A couple of nights ago I caught an Elephant Hawk-moth no bigger than a Small Elephant Hawk-moth. With a normal wingspan of 45–60 mm, compared with 40–45 mm for the Small Elephant Hawk-moth, it just looked wrong. L-R: The usual size comparison of EHM and Small EHM Nor is it just Elephant Hawk-moths. Other moth-ers have reported Dark Arches scarcely larger than the Flame Shoulders in the same trap, Common Wainscots matching the size of Small Wainscots, and distinctly undersized Silver Ys. Because Silver Y is a migrant arriving from continental Europe, that last observation hints that…