Tuesday 11 August 2015

Nice to have you back




Last month I enjoyed an excellent night when a Marbled Green and a Marbled Beauty arrived together. Now one of them has paid me a return visit; the Marbled Beauty above. A Spectacle Moth is kindly providing scale in place of my usual chubby fingers or thumb. The patterning of both the Marbled cousins is lovely, especially for its subtlety. Yesterday's Black Arches is also a favourite of mine with its op-art Bridget Riley treatment of black and white. Another of them came last night, snuggling up to a Common or Lesser Common Rustic to deny my fingers their day in the limelight again. But the Marbleds are in a different, subtler class.


Here he or she is again, closer up, above. Instead of a Marbled Green, I discovered as I went through the eggboxes, there was a second Marbled Beauty tucked away - picture below. See how the patterning is slightly different, but just as effective in terms of camouflage defence against birds.


A third moth in the trap also appeals to me, although it has appeared on the blog at regular intervals. I still get a kick of its peculiar shape, like a counter in a board game or, more appropriately, a piece of bird poo which a hunting sparrow or blackbird might ignore.  This is the Chinese Character moth. No other in the UK rests in anything resembling that position, so even I always know what it is.


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