There are a total of 59 species of butterfly which breed in Britain whilst over 2400 species of moths have been recorded in the British Isles. Butterflies and moths have a lot in common; they are both part of the scientific order Lepidoptera (from the Greek lepis meaning scale and pteron meaning wing), both start their lives as hungry caterpillars and both eat nectar from flowers. While butterflies usually fly in the daytime and moths generally fly at night; some moths are daytime fliers and many of these, such as the Cinnabar Moth, are very colourful unlike their rather drab coloured night flying cousins. The easiest way to tell the difference between a butterfly and a moth is to look at the antennae. A butterfly’s antennae are club-shaped with a long shaft and a bulb at the end while a moth’s antennae are feathery or saw-edged. Another pointer is that butterflies tend to fold their wings vertically up over their backs whilst moths tend to hold their wings in a tent-like fashion that hides the abdomen. On a more technical point, moths have their forewings joined to their hindwings by a frenulum, this allows the wings to work in unison during flight; butterflies do not have frenulums.

Butterflies are shown with a red background, moths with a dark yellow.