Dark Arches Moth - 14 July 2024

I found this moth on a door threshold today. When I look at the top section of this moth I can see at least two faces. One reminds me of a cow and the other is a small smiling face. I’ve read that this phenomenon is called Pareidolia. I read a very interesting article on this website :

Pareidolia (pronounced "par-i-DOH-lee-a") is a brain phenomenon in which a person sees or hears something significant in a random image or pattern. Pareidolia is what causes peoples to see faces in inanimate objects

After finding out that seeing faces in things is common I tried to search Google to see what type of moth this was. I found that this is possibly a Dark Arches moth, or Apamea Monoglypha.

It is quite a common moth in the UK and one interesting feature is that they present variability in colour which is probably the reason why it took me ages to accept that it may be this type of moth. If you know for sure though, please let me know as I’m still not totally convinced. I cannot see the characteristic 'arches' on the wings because of the way this moth landed on the side of the door threshold.

Dark Arches moths are apparently quite a common but I had not encountered it before. I also have a feeling that it came to die inside the house because the wings are not in such good shape. I feel sorry for it because it found a door threshold that is heavily varnished so it’s far from its natural environment. I’m not going to try to ‘help it go outside though’ because moths are really fragile.

I took about 5 photos of it but none of them was clear enough. In fact, I tried to 'lighten' the settings but had no luck :

It just wasn't a very attractive insect but at around 3 cm in size I did think that it would make a bit of a racket when flying around the light tonight. I do hope it perks up a bit so I can leave the door open for a bit so it can die outside.

Thank you for reading !