Sunday 17 March 2024

Showy

 


The first showy moth of the year was snoozing in the eggboxes this morning, an Oak Beauty which I transferred to the beech hedge for a nicer backdrop.  No Photoshopping though, after the Royal photo furore. Actually, Photoshopping is a skill, or possibly dark art, too far for me. I confine my interference to cropping. I am tempted sometimes to add 'warmth' or 'saturation' from the iPhone's editing function, if only because the camera's search for maximum lights plays such tricks with the colour anyway. Compare the beech leaves above with those below. There's not a lot in it but to my eye, the bottom photo is a little washed-out and duller and the top one is closer to the colours I saw.


Another welcome dab of colour was the russet of the Clouded Drab below, often a much duller moth than this example. Below it is an attractive Twin-spotted Quaker, a regular arrival at this time of the year, and following that, a March Moth with its unmistakable zigzags.






The micro below gave me a hard time, as I scrutinised my Micro Bible without success until plumping for a slightly odd example of the familiar Agonopterix alstroemeriana and putting that suggestion to the experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog.  The eternally helpful webmaster there, former air traffic controller Dave Wilton, was back speedily with the correct ID and I wasn't far off. The moth is Agonopterix heraclia/ciella and Dave adds interesting additional info, especially on its diet:

Your moth is a rather well-preserved individual of Agonopterix heracliana/ciliella (they've usually lost many of their scales by this time of year, after hibernation, so aren't as well marked as this one). Agonopterix alstromeriana is a much more brightly coloured moth than this which also hibernates, quite a common species which I imagine you will get in your garden too. However, your Alstroemerias are safe because its larvae actually use the far more sinister plant Conium maculatum, otherwise known as Hemlock.




Finally, two of my rivals in terms of getting at the moths. It's impossible to be really cross with a robin but, my goodness, you have to keep an eye on them when examining the eggboxes. One distraction and they're in and out in a flash. One moth fewer for me.



As for the twilight bats, just about discernible below. I cannot really tell how many moths they capture but clearly there are enough to keep them circling round.

Sunday 10 March 2024

Mothers' Day moths

 

Happy Mothers' Day! I'm greeting it with some colourful Spring flowers from the garden including the delectable Snakeshead Fritillary, still in bud on the left, because the overnight moths have been modest both in size and colouring. None the less worthy for that, however. Here they are:


First, a rather battered Agnopterix Alstromeriana, a very small but prettily-coloured mcro which I almost overlooked. Then below, a Clouded Drab, a dull-looking mouth with a dull-sounding name. It was more cheering to see the Twin-spotted Quaker in my third photo.



Finally a second and slightly larger micro, the very familiar Diurnea fagella.  A fairly meagre tally even when supplemented by assorted other Quakers and a Hebrew Character, but the initially promising weather was spoilt by rain. 


Have a great day, Mums everywhere. Back to Dads' Days tomorrow onwards...   Only kidding.

Wednesday 28 February 2024

One of Three

 My granddaughter and her schoolfriends rescued a tiny caterpillar - pic above - last week after one of them, blessed with especially eagle eyes, spotted it by an ivy leaf below a wintering beech hedge. With the soft-heartedness common in pre-teen girls, they decided to 'rescue' it and so it came home to Granny and Grandpa at the end of school. (It was our week to be on grandchild duty).

I didn't have my caterpillar Bible but the internet is an even better resource and we soon had a shortlist of possibilities. Because of the cattie's extreme youth, however, a precise ID was beyond our joint powers. But our best guess was the Yellow-tail and that meant searching for hawthorn and blackthorn, with leaves of the species' other foodplants, oak, sallow and other deciduous trees being unlikely at this time of the year.


The girls' main concern was providing the right food and they had already put a selection of other leaves in their collecting box. I meanwhile got on to the ever-excellent Upper Thames Moths blog where the guru Dave Wilton wondered whether the cattie might be a somewhat out-of-season White Ermine. So nettle, deadnettle and dandelion were added to the box.


Then the dots at the side prompted another UTM guru Tim Arnold to suggest that it could be a Jersey Tiger, a species common in Summer around the grandchildren's home. Fortunately their diet is described as 'a wide range of herbaceous plants' so we simply stuck in a bit of forget-me-not.


So there matters rest. The cattie was about a centimetre long last week. We will be back in ten days' time to see how it is getting on.

Monday 19 February 2024

New Year, New Moth


I've just had the trap out for only the second time this year - the first back in late January yielding a visitor total of exactly nil.  This time, the unusually mild night of Valentine's, saw more than 40 moths snugly asleep in the eggboxes.  Among them, most unusually after all my years of shining the light, was a new species for the garden.

Behold the Oak Nycteolene, in its full glory in the first picture above and as I found it in the second, below. I say that it is new to me but as you can see, it is very self-effacing and therefore easy to miss. Its colour also makes for good camouflage in the creamy and grey boxes, so I may have overlooked it on previous visits.

The moth is a macro but very similar in both size and appearance to some of the micro Agnonopteryx family in whose ranks it has occasionally been mistakenly numbered in the past (see pic of the worst offenders below from the Micro-moth Bible). To double-check, I posted my top picture on the invaluable Upper Thames Moths blog with its many expert contributors, asking while about it if any of them knew what its curious second name might mean.

My Googling got me as far as linking the Nyc part to the Greek word for night but otherwise I was left with my fantasy that Nycteolene might be some sort of oil or paraffin which could power a portable moth trap out in the wilds. So many thanks to Tim Arnold, one of the experts mentioned above, who kindly commented thus:


A very big thank you for this solution to my puzzle.

The Oak Nycteoline is classed as only locally common but is well-distributed and tends to emerge from winter hibernation at this time of the year. It varies a lot, as you can see from its entry below in the Moth Bible. I was lucky to get one of the more obviously ID-able forms, lychenoides.


As for my other visitors, here's a selection, all familiar arrivals from late Winters and early Springs in years gone by: Dotted Border, slightly different Dotted Border, Pale Brindled Beauty,  Dark Chestnut (I think), Common Quaker, Hebrew Character, Spring Usher (great name!), March Moth and a second, rather different Common Quaker. 


Altogether, a very rewarding night.

Saturday 23 December 2023

Merry Christmas from - and to - the Moths

 

Here's an exciting game of Spot the Moth for what is probably going to be my final post for 2024, though - who knows - a quiet and not-too-cold spell before the New Year may persuade me to plug in one last time. Anyway, the solitary resident of the eggboxes two nights ago was an attractive and good-condition Angle Shades. Can you spot it, above? Hours of fun, or half a minute at least.


Here it is from closer too, along with its protective Santa.  The behaviour of trapped moths always interests me; many of the smaller ones flutter off as soon as they can and I have missed hundreds over the years which scarper as soon as I lift out the bulb and take the transparent cowl off the bowl. But the pudgier ones are incredibly comatose, particularly on cooler mornings.



That was the case with this Angle Shades which was originally slumbering as shown above. It woke up a little during my festive transfer and crawled the entire length of Santa but once comfortable, it settled in on the garland and was unfazed by quite strong gusts of nippy wind. It was still there at 4.30pm, unmoved, when we went to meet a train but when we got back at 5.15pm, it had taken wing. The effect of the dark, I presume.


I have not posted since before the birthday of my entomological granddaughter two weeks ago, when the moths provided a terrific display. Traditionally, they have been outstanding at recognising these significant dates. There were more than 20 December Moths in the trap and I ceremoniously exhibited quite a few of them to her on this cushion whose bright colouring lifts the rather solemn - although beautiful - livery of the moths. You can see some of them below as they were in the trap, and I've added a few close-ups to show their excellent antennae - all are males.







And I have kept the really exciting news until last. For her birthday - only her tenth - the said goddaughter received...a MOTH TRAP!  It is quite small and has a softer actinic bulb than my great lighthouse, but she should do well with it. So when this trapper moves on to the land of eternal moth bliss, he will have a successor.  Merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years!


Sunday 19 November 2023

Autumn colours


Two Feathered Thorns came last night and you could be forgiven for thinking on first glance that they might be different species of moth. The yellowy, softly-shadowed one above is unlike any other I have had in the trap before. The one below is the usual form.

Both are males with their excellent antennae. Their solitary companion in the trap was a dozy Sprawler - like the Feathered Thorns, the possessor of a nice warm, furry collar on its thorax.


As is my habit if we're asked out, I took these moths to some friends who had kindly invited us for lunch. The moths behaved well after a little initial panic and settled down on a window to admire the view. We had such a nice time that I completely forgot about them and it was left to our host to chase us down the street with the moths in our granddaughter's collecting box.  Thank goodness. I didn't need the moths but would have got into trouble if I'd lost the box.

We liberated the moths on the spot and they flew vigorously away in the dusk. Barring interception by bats or birds, they have started a new life - and perhaps new families - seven miles south of here.

Wednesday 8 November 2023

Whiskery gents


As happened last year, I find myself making the mistake of thinking that the season is over and then being surprised new arrivals. I put the trap out rather absent-mindedly on Monday night, not expecting anything much, but the morning brought this very welcome bunch of Sprawlers. The species is named after a curious reflex of its caterpillar when threatened but it always puts me in mind of a John Buchan style gathering of gents in a club, as below.


It's partly the name, which conjures up Harry Enfield's incoherent old buffer in his armchair, and partly the tweedy outfit of the moth. Mind you, the beads of dew on the lower left one in my first photograph obscured the pattern so much at first sight, that I thought that I was dealing with something else altogether. Here is how it looked, below.  It must have been deathly cold.


Two of the other three Sprawlers were in the eggboxes while the third had a perch on the bulbholder, below. Another new species for this year was the Winter Moth or rather two of them and the guest list was completed by a Feathered Thorn.





Sunday 5 November 2023

Previous Pasha

 


As an epilogue to my last post, I thought that I should show you a photo of the only other time that I have seen a Two-tailed Pasha, on the serpentine island of Meneghello near Hvar in Croatia some 20 years ago. Unlike the hill-topper in Provence, it was swooping about on a beach and took cover in a fissure in the rocks - there is scarcely any sand in that part of the world. I managed to get the photo above but then it was off, and it did not come back.


I overlooked a discovery in France as well, a very familiar caterpillar which Penny saw scuttling across a forest path on our way back from inspecting an ancient 'rucher' or apiary, surrounded by warnings that bees can sting. I've already featured quite a few of these larva thanks to my granddaughter's excellence at spotting and breeding them - the Pale Tussock, or 'hop dog' known and often cursed by Kentish hop-pickers who reacted to the mild toxins on its hairs.


The beehives in hollowed out cork oak were fascinating. Known about for years in documents, they date back to the 17th century but were only rediscovered and restored in 2006. New hives were installed and now house more than 5000 Provence black bees. The forests of sweet chestnut, cork oak and arbutus - the last the larval foodplant of the Two-tailed Pasha as I mentioned in my last post - suit them well and their honey is most flavoursome.


Back here, I put out the trap last night in spite of the chilly weather - maybe warmed as well as illuminated by Guy Fawkes displays. I'm glad I did. My first December Moth of the year arrived in its smart fur coat, along with two Feathered Thorns.  Here's the December Moth:



I moved it to our beech hedge for the Autumn colours, to remind me how early it has come - in terms of its name.  Last year I did not record one until December had begun, although I was trapping very intermittently,  And now here are the Feathered Thorns, one on the cowl and the other in an eggbox.



Finally, one a wall beside the light, I found this, below, which I think is a Satellite but I am studying further.


Oh, and a little non-moth too: