Penny has a biology degree and sometimes asks disconcerting questions. For example: do you check whether moths are arriving at the same time as they did last year? On the whole, they are, but this beautiful visitor didn't come in 2008. It's a Gold Spot (or possibly the rarer Lempke's Gold Spot; you can only really tell the difference by examining genitalia. Lempke, I think, was Prof J B Lempke, a Dutch moth expert). It's been to the trap in previous years at least once - I will check my written records - but I was still surprised and delighted to find it snoozing on the wire just below the bulb. The other little picture is of a Large Yellow Underwing's tail peeping out of my increasingly tatty egg boxes. We must eat some more eggs.
The LYUs are very partial to sneaking right down inside the box cones. I don't know how they turn round in there (because even in cones without a hole at the end they finish facing up, peeping sleepily at you from inside the cone). On Penny's point, Poplar Hawks are still coming to the light. The first appeared on 31 May. They have been similar long distance runners in previous years.
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