Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Time to say Goodbye, for now
Monday, 11 October 2010
Coffee morning
I'll stick my neck out this morning and say that this arrival last night (above) is a Green-brindled Crescent, although nothing about it is green.
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Sunday, 10 October 2010
A green thought in a green shade
Back in Leeds, back at the trap. Lots of interesting visitors thanks to the warmth. Just one of them for now: only a Red-Green Carpet, but isn't it a lovely thing? More tomorrow because I must now to bed, after a happy day down in Dorridge with the in-laws and many other assorted members of the Wainwright and Dharmaratnam genuses of the Homo sapiens species, clustering around Radha's Sri Lankan curries like so many intoxicated moths.
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Packing-up postponed
I was going to say that our revels now are ending. But even in the Lake District, the weather has been astonishingly mild and I'm minded to keep the trap going for the next few days, back in Leeds. Last night we all went out to eat at the Woolpack near Brotherilkeld, at the foot of the great, wild curve of upper Eskdale, and although it was blowy, the wind was as balmy as in the South Seas. During a day's round of Burnmoor Tarn, the lofty heights above Wastdale's Screes and back up lost little Mitredale, we found plenty more Broom Moth caterpillars around, an elusive brown, dotted moth jittering about in the bracken in daylight (any identification ideas, anyone?), and a Comma resting on a Forestry Commission warning sign about tree-felling. In the evening, yet another Small Tortoiseshell fluttered into Penny's and my bedroom and came to rest on Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna (above). There's a great, human and instructive read, as the butterfly seemed to know.
Kingsolver btw is the sister-in-law of a very nice American academic called Mark Whitaker who has written a biography/analysis of the murdered Sri Lankan journalist Sivaram Dharmaratnam, younger brother of my in-law Suri and Uncle of our Tom's lovely Abi, supplier of interesting news of moths to this blog from Mexico City. I live in hope of meeting BK one day. Details of Mark's book are on www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Politics-Sivaram-Revolutionary-Anthropology/dp/0745323537
Friday, 8 October 2010
Small things in big places
I walked from Boot to the Jaws of Borrowdale yesterday, over Scafell and Scafell Pike. Fifteen words to describe eight hours in Paradise, especially as the mist lifted shortly before I became, for half-a-minute or so, the highest person in England. Thereafter the sun shone and shone. My Paradise opinion seemed to be shared by a Small Tortoiseshell which was basking in the sunshine on Broad Col.
What was the Tortoiseshell doing then? Maybe it flew up yesterday from the nearest bunch of nettles, its larval foodplant which isn't to be seen anywhere near Broad Col. Or perhaps it finds shelter deep in the omnipresent piles of stones (see the pic of the Pike's summit, Broad and Ill Crags, above) which also make excellent storage heaters to bask on when the sun does shine. Either way, I was so surprised to see the butterfly that I failed to sort out my camera in time. But down in Borrowdale, I saw three more on the roadside verge between Seatoller and Rosthwaite and here is one of them. Also a dead shrew on the fellside between Burnmoor tarn and Scafell summit. There is, or was, a lot of life in them there hills.
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Thursday, 7 October 2010
God (or Nature) and Man (or Woman)
A bright flutter of colour sprang up yesterday outside the Screes pub in Nether Wasdale when Penny and I cycled up for lunch. After this summer, I automatically assumed that it would be a Peacock or Red Admiral. They have far outnumbered the third of the lovely Vanessid trio (see learned post some weeks below on the origins of this insect family name). But no. The flutter was indeed that third: a lovely Small Tortoiseshell. Apart from exalting its beauty, even with the camera struggling to cope with the Screes' dazzling whitewash, there isn't any more I have to say. Except, perhaps, to contrast it with a similar work of man: my pillow here in Boot. A good effort and lots of hard work, but not really comparable. Not very comfortable either, with the sequins, until I turn it over.
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Ratty and Badger (and Jiminy too)
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Tick box
Yesterday was caterpillar today. Today it's ticks. To be accurate, one tick, which fastened itself to the shapely leg of one of our Lake District band, Margaret McGowan, an educational adviser whose website will shortly be up and running on www.educationadviceonline.co.uk. It latched on to her halfway up Scafell via Cam Spout where the more muscular half of the group went adventuring. Penny and I and a couple of the others meanwhile perambulated round Eel, Stoney and Burnmoor tarns below Slight Side and found an enormous number of Fox moth caterpillars, plus plenty of the sleek, stripey ones you see below.
They appear to have been designed by the manufacturers of Hi-Viz vests which doesn't help them to hide but probably puts off predatory birds. I remember finding these as a boy in bracken on the Deer Hill at Bolton Abbey and noting how the younger ones had the comely livery of yellow with British Racing Green, the latter changing to brown in those close to pupation.
I've done a quick check on the net to see what they are but without success, and have to get my boots on now. Will try harder later.
The tick btw is very dead, the result of immersion in a cup of boiling water. I'm not going to try, but I imagine that it might test like an extremely tiny shrimp. It is the size of a pinhead.
Monday, 4 October 2010
Coincidence time again
Here is my son's Charles Darwin doll (no, no, we weren't that much of pushy parents, it's a fairly recent joke). He's sitting on the summit of Green Crag above Boot in Eskdale, whence this post comes. It seems a bit improbable, surrounded by vast mountains and without a peep of phone connection, but wifi is penetrating right into the kitchen of the farmhouse we're staying in, which was built in 1703. I can this bring you news of another glorious date match, like the Blair's Shoulder Knots and Black Rustics which faithfully . Like Darwin, I am slowly building up a scientific case on moths' flying seasons, not that it will be news to any scientists.
Sunday, 3 October 2010
Which am I?
Saturday, 2 October 2010
Moths can be art critics too
There is a moth called the Pod Lover, albeit never seen by me. Now I nominate this overnight visitor (above) as the Art Lover, because it had the nous to settle on this copy of an oil painting when I decanted the eggboxes in our kitchen, safe from the rain. It's a distinguished portrait because the painter was Nick Penny, now head of the National Gallery. We were schoolboys together in Shrewsbury where an exhibition including this picture opens next week. The subject is another of our 17-year-old contemporaries, Ron Smith, who was a talented and original artist like Nick. I didn't know him well and long ago lost touch, but the expression is how I recall him; an outsider and never seeming quite at ease.
The exhibition is launched on 9 October at Shrewsbury School's art building; I'm not entirely sure how generally open it is, but in my day the place welcomed all and sundry, as indeed it should, given its wonderful facilities and grounds, in which we frolicked happily all those years ago. One of those involved is John Alford, a fine painter himself who with Arthur Broadbent, a wonderful Irishman with a past career in wartime camouflage, ran an inspirational art department in the 1960s. Quite apart from their teaching, including Arthur's slides of outstanding European buildings which were almost all obscured by his Morris Traveller, their art school was a sort of independent republic. A basement window was never locked and much-used to escape Cadet Force and similar nonsense. I cannot prove that this negligence was deliberate but have no doubts myself.
And the moth? I'm pretty sure that it's a Common Quaker (but see PS below). Less distinguished than its lined relations in the previous post, but trim. Its main flight season is March-May but small numbers emerge in mild autumns, and it's mild now (though soaking). Talking of which, I surprised this vast amphibian (below) outside our back door while setting the trap. It's toadlike in size but froglike in shape. Could it be a late, mild autumn pregnancy? Another question: why on earth have we got the hosepipe out in current conditions? I haven't the slightest idea.
PS Dean has put me right in Comments. It's a Yellow-lined Quaker after all. Sorry.
Friday, 1 October 2010
Society of Friends
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PS I just checked back and the Yellow-lined Quaker has been here before, but not the Red one. Huzza!
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