Laura Ashley time

I think that we may get a dry night tonight; something of a marvel in current conditions. If so, I am expecting a delicate flutter of 'Laura Ashley' moths, the ones which remind you of girls from the late 1960s and early Seventies as they drift about near outside lights or in the headlamp beam of the car.*

They laid on a dress rehearsal at the end of last week when I saw this group of them before I even got to the trap: Common Waves or Light Emeralds like the example below which was in the eggboxes when I lifted the lid and began my checks.

With them come equally delicate species such as the Willow Beauty shown below. I am very pleased to record these moths in good condition; as fragile and relatively large-winged moths, they soon start showing smudged scales or frayed and torn edges to their wings.

*Footnote: I married one of the said girls who was also chief sub of Cosmo at the time and she has just helped me to rephrase my metaphor on the grounds that I might be thought to have been reminiscing about girls rather than moths drifting about under streetlamps; as in the risky coincidence for entomologists that the Malay kupu-kupu malaam means both 'moths' and 'prostitutes'.