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There's a flying insect being caught indoors today in Sydney Australia. Before it is being caught, it basically flies like a moth. However googling of Tinea pellionella and other cloth moths does not suggest it is a cloth moth as hair is missing from its very small sized head.

It is also known to be very common every year when spring approaches in australia

To assist identification, the bug was caught in a plastic jar to allow multiple angles of it to be photographed

enter image description here

  • Measured body length (not including long antennae): 1.1 cm
  • Color: Brown an golden brown with lustre
  • Legs: 6 (front pair very short, middle pair is forked, hind legs have some golden brown feathery structure)
  • Head is black, very small and have no hair

enter image description here

  • Here one can easily see the hindlegs are covered by some bristle like golden brown feathery structures, and also its shiny golden segmented abdomen

enter image description here

  • The camera is not fast enough to capture it unblur when it is flying, but the few moments when it opened its wings can be seen here extracted from a video

enter image description here

And these are our best shots using the iphone camera in capturing its flight with its wings fully opened.

Is this a type of moth, is it a pest or is it neutral. What is the species?

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  • $\begingroup$ It is a moth, so belongs to the order of Lepidoptera, and to the unoffical suborder of microlepidoptera. These are notoriously difficult, even with good literature, which i'm not sure exists for Australia (European myself). $\endgroup$
    – RHA
    Commented Dec 15, 2016 at 21:18
  • $\begingroup$ Do you find this similar? $\endgroup$
    – Tyto alba
    Commented Jan 26, 2017 at 22:31
  • $\begingroup$ That might be it, as the glossiness of the wings, the feathery ends and the colors patterns matches. Strangely, I don't seemed to see any of the two dark horizontal bands that is present in all other google images of the species (except mine and the photo shown in your link) $\endgroup$
    – Secret
    Commented Jan 26, 2017 at 22:53

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This is a Bogong Moth,the migration point was really helpful !! They migrate in masses around the
1. Victorian alps
2. southern Australia (Sydney,Canberra)
3. New Zealand..
Agrotis infusa,
These are pests which affect many plants,they're not neutral and they Cause some attentive damage

More on this and the site which helped me

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