Burnished Brass

Burnished Brass, Diachrysia chrysitis forma juncta.  Farthing Downs, 27 June 2012.

This creature, looking like some barbarous golden owl statue, is a moth called the Burnished Brass.  It stands out in a moth trap and some think it is the most beautiful you are likely to catch.

It rests with its wings tented around its body, so that the golden colour gleams out:

Burnished Brass, Diachrysia chrysitis forma juncta.  Farthing Downs, 27 June 2012.

Here, it is resting over a fold in my measuring paper.  To me it looks exotic, and I can imagine it being a giant, and the paper some alien landscape. 

There are two colour forms of this moth.  In the other, the brown band in the middle of the wing is continuous, and the golden patches are separated.  The form shown here is said to look identical to another species, the Cryptic Burnished Brass, Diachrysia stenochrysitis, and there seems to be some argument about whether a photo like this could be either species and should be labelled accordingly.

This moth belongs to the same Noctuid subfamily, the Plusiinae, as the Silver Y I showed recently.