Two crackers

Two lovely moths this morning; ever so common and regular as clockwork at this time of year, but you can't get blase about this sort of ravishing colour and patterning. The Peach Blossom, to the left in the pic above, is one of my top ten UK moths; it really does look like a fragment of a fruit tree in flower. In real, its background colour also seems greener which must be a trick played by the scales on the eye. I haven't got a picture of our apple tree in flower handy, but here's one of our rhododendrons in full blossoming glory in honour of the moth. One of Titania's other attendants, for sure.

The other arrival is the Buff Arches with its 'collar' ruff modelled on that of the Spanish ambassador to the court of Elizabeth I and the strange, almost manuscript patterns on its forewings. Come to think of it, the way they wrote by hand so beautifully in those days, its swirls are exactly what the Spanish ambassador might have appended to his signature, with a flourish, on despatches to Philip II of Spain about how necessary it was to send an armada.

Here are the moths larger, and if you click on them, they will go larger still. Wooo! It was an exceedingly good night for moths last night; the catch also included two Poplar Hawks and one Elephant Hawk plus a string of other riches which I will tell you about in due course. And now the sun is out again, although the forecast is not so good.