Tawny wave
The tawny wave is a small moth with thin wavy lines across its wings, and that is where its name comes from. Its colour changes a lot: it can be tawny, pale brown, reddish purple, grey or straw yellow. It likes warm, sandy places like dunes and heaths.
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Fun facts
How damp the weather is affects its colour.
It flies both by day and by night, and comes to lamps after dark.
Its eggs are shaped like little cylinders with 16 ridges on them.
The half-grown caterpillars spend the winter in the grass.
Most asked questions about Tawny wave
?Why is it called the tawny wave?
Because its wings are often tawny brown with thin wavy lines across them.
?Where does the tawny wave live?
From Spain all the way to Mongolia, in warm sandy places and grassland.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Scopula rubiginata
- Named by
- Hufnagel, 1767
- Group
- Moths
- Family
- Geometridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Geometridae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa
Where the facts come from
- Scopula rubiginata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Engeser. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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