Tuesday 12 May 2015

Happy nights are here again



Hooray! A second warmish night has brought lots of good things to the trap which was also positioned in idyllic circumstances. It's our wedding anniversary today and, in exchange for a dew-fresh posy of everything I could find early this morning including purple-sprouting broccoli flowers, Penny gave me a lovely card entitled 'Through honey-scented thickets'.


A honey-scented thicket was the home of the lamp, a little pool of fresh grass surrounded by lacy cow-parsley which in the evening especially gives off a marvellous scent. Here are some of the night visitors attracted by that and by the lamp (although the issue of whether they are really attracted by the latter, or rather distracted, is one which has been much debated here and remains unresolved).


The top picture, which reminds me of the solitary Spitfire in the Battle of Britain flight deployed at the VE Day celebrations (they once flew over our house when we lived in London, sounding like 1000 badly-tuned lawnmowers) is that excellent creature the Lime-speck pug. It could as well be named the Bird-dropping.


The sceond picture shows one of a couple of that handsome moth, the Common Swift, and the third is a Bright-line, Brown-eye - not to be confused with the Brown-line, Bright-eye which flies later in the Summer. Then we have a Treble-bar and - below - two sections which will be familiar to regular reads: (a) two macro-moths yet to be identified by yours truly though I realise the second one is one of the many and baffling Pug tribe, and (b) three micromoths ditto.

Update - thanks to Ben in Comments: a worn Powdered Quaker

Update - thanks to Ben again - an Oak Tree Pug

Update: Ben ticks off all three micros: first Agonopterix arenella

Then Elachista apicipunctella

And lastly Celypha lacunana - all three veterans of last year but, alas, my recognition skills are disastrous

Finally, here are a couple of photos to conceal from the eyes of anyone even mildly insectphobic. The first is of a couple of other visitors to the eggboxes last night: a slumbering wasp and a Maybug - the latter harmless in spite of its fearsome appearance)...


...and the second an extraordinary picture taken two days ago in London's Homerton by my niece Annie. As her Mum enquires in an email: what happened next..?



2 comments:

Bennyboymothman said...

Hi Martin.
*Powdered Quaker.
*Oak-tree Pug (with the large discal spot and rounded shorter wings)
*Agonopterix arenella
* Hard at hat angle (best side on these) but looks good for Elachista apicipunctella, see my photo a few days ago.
*Celypha lacunana

what on earth is that on the Mini? Bees? or just a growth of somekind :D

Cheers
Ben

Martin Wainwright said...

Very many thanks Ben, MUCH appreciated as ever. Yes, they are bees. I wonder if the queen somehow got into the car

all warm wishes

M