butterflies or moths?

[litljortindan]

Can anyone tell me what these are in the last twenty seconds of the above? My wife thought bath-whites but doubted there'd be so many of them and so far north so moths?

[KatTai]

Not likely to be bath whites up in Orkney, they are rare in the UK in general. I was in Orkney in July and there were loads of them everywhere in that type of habitat. I think I can see little hints of colour but can't quite tell.

[Caberfeidh]

Nothing a rolled-up newspaper can't deal with.

[Sgurr]

They look as if they have dark tips which may mean female orange tips. This poses 3 questions (1) Is July in Scotland early enough to be "early summer" (2) Would you only get one sex (3) If not, would your eyes and the camera in that light see the male orange tips as simply darker than the white

[stirlingdavo]

They are almost certainly moths. Orkney has a few species of butterfly but the four species of 'whites' that we get in Scotland aren't really associated with heathery habitats and certainly not in large numbers.

Kat's shout of Magpie moth looks to be a good one - it's hard to tell for definite from the footage but they are the right size, it's the right time of year and the right habitat.

Hope that helps,

Cheers David

[raykilhams]

I think KatTai is probably correct as we saw hundreds of magpie moths in the heather between Keiss and John O'Groats last July .

[LDPWalker]

An easy and reliable way to tell a moth from a butterfly is that butterflies always have club tipped antennae, moths never do. You can see the white clubbed tips on the picture of the black and white butterfly in this thread (a large white, probably), but no club tips on the moth (which I agree is an example of The Magpie, to give it its full name). The other crucial identifier is that moths never rest with vertically closed wings, whereas butterflies generally do. These two facts should banish all confusion............