The admiral and the harvest

I walked to Harvest Festival this morning and was rewarded for my virtue by this beautiful Red Admiral, sunning itself in the glorious weather which has returned. The butterfly was being rewarded, too, for its perseverance during the recent glum spell, unlike this Peacock below which we discovered in rather premature hibernation while getting down some cobwebby chairs from the roofspace.

The Red Admiral was on our sweetcorn, one of the crops I selected for my Little Miss Muffet basket to take to the service, as something we never succeeded in growing in Leeds. Here are some of its other contents. I must tell you how to grow a tin of Heinz oxtail soup sometime.

I will return to the subject of Miss Muffet now, however, because of its entomological origins. The nursery rhyme is based on Thomas Moffett, one of the first well-known English illustrators of butterflies and moths, who also had a liking for spiders.  This wasn't inherited by his daughter.

As for the moths, last night's warmth only attracted the usual early autumn crew of yellow and lunar underwings plus a dainty Sallow. I like this Straw Dot, though, one of three who were all woken up by the warmth of the sunlight flooding their eggboxes, and swiftly flew away.