Common Carpet

Epirrhoe alternata

The common carpet or white-banded toothed carpet is a moth of the family Geometridae. The species was first described by Otto Friedrich Müller in 1764. It is found throughout the Palearctic and the Near East. In North America it ranges across the northern tier of the United States plus every province and territory of Canada. Source

Where it is now

In the last 8 weeks this insect was recorded 176 times across 10 areas (each area is a 5 degree square).

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Movement and weather

Each season it is first heard regularly where daytime highs are around 18°C (typically 15 to 19°C, from 8 areas). That holds across 20° of latitude, which suggests its timing follows temperature more than the calendar.

Over the weeks it was present in the past year, its centre in Europe ranged from 46°N in September to 61°N in May, about 1,700 km apart.

Arrival dates

The week it was first heard regularly in each region, after at least six weeks away. Dates differ from south to north, so a region has a range.

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Figures are effort corrected and come from automatic sound identification, which makes mistakes. How this is measured and how it compares with human observers.