Living three stories up next to a busy main road in Central London, you wouldn’t expect animals to play much part in my home life. You’d be wrong. The narrow strip of garden outside is the regular haunt of foxes, squirrels and birds of all kinds (including a family of jays). And during the summer months, my flat attracts more nocturnal insects than any place I’ve ever lived. Moths are a nightly visitor – usually of the tiny flutter-annoyingly-then-die variety. Recently, however, we’ve had some true behe-moths flapping around the flat. I took the following shots a couple of weeks ago. So, borrowing from Grrl Scientist’s bird posts, I invite readers to name these mystery moth species.

In case it helps with the identification, both moths were present in my bathroom at around 10pm on the same evening in early August, in North London (Camden Town). They were roughly the same size, at about 5-6 cm long.