Gotcha!

Hooray! A pug moth which even I can identify. As a rule, I find these little scraps of flying matter an impossible challenge, even since the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society kindly gave me a special book on UK pug moths in exchange for a talk. But this has to be the White-spotted Pug, wouldn't you agree? I will be plunged into despair if I am wrong.

It was attracted by the lamp which I placed in a rather unusual position after dramatic events two weeks ago when we were in London with the grandchildren. The usual scene of chaos at breakfast was interrupted by a 'phone call from our kindly neighbours saying that power lines had come down after heavy rain dislodged a tree branch in our garden. Said neighbours had been warned not to go to close to the exciting scene because of the presence of 11,000 suddenly liberated volts. I remember reading at university about the Marquess of Salisbury accidentally electrifying the dewy lawns at Hatfield House in the 1890s during the course of the amateur experiments in which he liked to indulge. Luckily that was not the case here.

Southern and Scottish Power were extremely efficient and we subsequently stripped the felled branches into a log pile and this temporary mountain of brash. I can't say that elevating the trap to its proud position on the summit obviously increased the number of moths in the eggboxes. But it looked impressive.

Here are some of the night's other visitors: the first Scalloped Oak of the year, above, and a Gold Spot or Lempke's Gold Spot below. I know the latter has featured here recently, but I can't resist them. Ditto with the Black Arches whose picture comes next, though I have the added excuse of comparing the slightly worn condition of this one with the pristine specimen which came here on Saturday night and whose photo is reproduced below the first one.

Lastly, a humble but beautiful Garden Carpet, and the most appealing of the six different types of the Common Rustic.

400-up

I put the trap out last night but not with great optimism after an afternoon and early evening of continuous rain. We have a group of elderly people coming to tea later on (my latent baking skills have been revived with a rather crisp looking Cherry Madeira) and I'd like to show them a moth or two.

As I expected, the eggboxes were only thinly populated. The air in the garden was still moisty this morning and flying through it overnight, if you were moth-sized, would have been a damp experience. But there were sufficient nice things for my purpose, among them the Black Arches and Small Phoenix shown here.

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I admit that today's post may seem a bit of an advert for Burford Brown eggs - perhaps they would like to sponsor me. But I'm not very apologetic because both these moths chose the same box and anyway the eggs are extremely nice. More expensive but worth it for the treat. More to the point, and the reason for my headline, is that my tally of moth species in the garden here has now topped 400. Huzza!

Class of 2017 (1)

It poured with rain last night (great for the garden and Community Allotments) but I woke up early this morning. With no trap to examine, I did a little good housekeeping and added 11 newcomers since the end of May to my records list.

Here they are as a reminder to myself that when I feel that I am getting repetitive in this tenth year of the blog - as indeed I too often am - there are still regular novelties and surprises.

The characters in the multiple picture are, left to right, row by row: Grey Pine Carpet, Double Lobed, Bordered Pug, Ethmia dodecea, Campion, Toadflax Pug, Brown Silver-line, Calamatropha paludella and Donacaula forficella.

My computer's Layout facility won't do a multiple of more than nine, so the remaining newcomers have glorious slots of their own below: the micro Agapeta zoegana and the macro Lattice Heath.

Looking forward to more!

Beauty indeed

All moths are welcome here, so far as I am concerned (and I think that I speak for Penny too, albeit with due deference). But some lift the heart in a special way and one such came this morning: the modestly-sized but glorious Bordered Beauty.

It is near in family to yesterday's equally lovely Maiden's Blush, so I am a happy moth enthusiast at the moment. Neither moth is rare but you will be lucky to see them unless you have dealings with a light trap. No wonder that enthusiasm for the hobby is growing, and with it the country's knowledge of our moths.

The other feature of today's arrivals was that quite a few of them elected to slumber near to the moth trap but outside it, among them the Yellowtail above and the Common Footman at the foot of this post. In between are two of the many slumberers in the eggboxes: an Engrailed (Update: sorry and many thanks to my Commentor below; it's a Willow Beauty. And here am I talking about an increase in knowledge of moths. I find these - and too many other categories of brown/grey types - persistently hard to distinguish. Ah, well...) and an Iron Prominent.

Local lattice

A new moth for the second post running - a delicate little visitor which perched on my rather less delicate finger in the 'Let's pretend I'm a butterfly' stance, with its wings folded vertically rather than open or flat in its back.

I couldn't tell its identity straight off and the Moth Bible shows very few underwings. But an evening's leisurely look at suspects led to me to the Latticed Heath - like my last post's Double Lobed a common moth but not one which I have recorded either here in Leeds.

It seems to have triggered a trend for would-be butterflies among my moths. This morning, the trap included the Common Carpet above (and with its wings spread out after I had tickled it, below) and what a think is a second CC in the second picture below. 

Here are some of my other visitors on a damp and slightly colder night: a Red Carpet, that beautiful and beautifully-named moth the Maiden's Blush alongside a Ruby Tiger, a sample of the hundreds (literally) of opalescent Mother of Pearl micros which are by far my commonest moth at present, and the delkicate, related micros, the Ringed China-mark or Parapoynx stratiotata and the Small China-mark or Cataclysta lemnata (I think, so far as the latter is concerned; can't see what else it could have been). I like that word Parapoynx.

Newcomer, maybe

I sometimes wonder how many moths have visited my trap, and possibly even been examined by me, which were new for our garden but have not made it on to my list. One possible candidate is the Double Lobed, above and below, a common moth but one which I have not recorded - until this morning. I had been on the verge of passing by on the other side, the trap having several hundred residents, on the assumption that it was a Common or Lesser Common Rustic. But luckily I felt that the pattern wasn't quite the same, and I was right.

Here is the afore-mentioned Common or Lesser Common Rustic - genital examination or even dissection is needed to tell the closely-related species apart, and I'm not up for that. These are common as much hereabouts and there were at least a dozen in the eggboxes. The markings are similar to the Double Lobed and the moths are side by side in the Moth Bible, so perhaps my negligence over missing the DB until now, assuming that to have been the case, may be excused.

Another visitor which gave me great pleasure last night was a Black Arches, and exquisite op-art moth which is only locally common but apparently spreading North like many UK moth species. I tried to get a picture of its fine pink abdomen but it was too nervy. I'm putting in my blurred effort, though, because it gives a glimpse of the grey, satiny hindwings which are normally concealed.

I also welcomed my first Dusky Thorn of the year (first two pictures below) and nice examples of a Phoenix, a Lesser Yellow Underwing, a Campion and a Ruby Tiger. 

Here too is that fine and excellently identifiable pug moth, the Lime-speck which rivals the Chinese Character in the imitation bird-poo camouflage stakes. Update: except that it isn't. It's another new species for my garden: the Bordered Pug. What I thought was the Lime-speck's unmistakeable white blotch is placed differently. O what a fool am I! But at least this is a genuine self-correct, after a train journey spent musing over recent catches and moth pictures online. Finally, the patch of our vegetable garden where I placed the trap was full of 'outsider' moths roosting on potato plants and, in the case of the Brimstone moth below, asparagus.

Oh, and I have a final curiosity in the shape of this little moth pretending to be a butterfly. I shall spend a quiet hour later Googling the underwings of possible suspects.

Patience rewarded

I boasted yesterday that I was patient enough to wait for a Yellowtail to show the reason for its name, and today my patience was rewarded. For the third week running, there were several of the species in the eggboxes, all of them initially hunched as shown below, with any colour other than white - plus a couple of grey spots - modestly out of sight.

I have found from experience that teasing them with fragments of eggbox or twigs merely annoys them and sets them creeping about prior to flying away altogether. With this one, it seemed to be a simple, brusque movement of the box which caused the tail to shoot up.  Anyway, there it is - a male-only habit, not surprisingly you may think, and an enjoyable one to see.

Flying the yellow flag doesn't last long. I had time to take only a couple of shots with my iPad Mini before the tail was on its way back into hiding - pic of this above. Meanwhile, I was distracted and delighted by the presence of one of the Kitten moths in the trap for the first time this year: the beautifully coloured and patterned Poplar Kitten below. Like the parental-sounding Puss Moth and the rarer Feline, the Kittens all have thick, strokeable 'fur' on their heads, a feature which is generally reckoned to give the family its cat-related names.

Otherwise, I spent some time pondering whether this footman moth might be something unusual because of the folding crease down the centre of its back, as opposed to the normal resting posture of the Common Footman shown in the third picture below, or the spindlier Scarce Footman in the fourth picture. But I came to the conclusion that it was another Common one, just with the wings unusually tucked away.

Further visitors included this fine Silver Y, a Bloodvein (well-named) and the little Rosy Minor at the bottom. A good (and warm) night.