Small and dusty

A visit to London yesterday on grandchild duty brought me another new moth: the Small Dusty Wave, above, which was slumbering on an area wall in the comforting glow of a security lamp. Its midget size makes the pebbledash look like the boulder-strewn craters of the Moon.

The moth is like a grey version of the Small Fan-footed Wave, which does call here, and also easily mistakable for one of that infuriatingly hard-to-ID tribe, the Pug Moths. The Moth Bible warns of this risk and I can bear it out, having puzzled over several pages of Pug illustrations in a vain attempt to track it down. The clue to its real identity, for me at least, lies in the black dots in its hindwings. Lots of Pugs have a dot on the forewings, but none go in for one on the hind ones.

'Small and dusty'. incidentally, is a good description of the grandchildren after a lovely time yesterday at the fake beach in the Olympic Park, above, which is wonderfully well-used.

Back here in the trap this morning, there was one of the finest examples of an Orange Swift I have had the pleasure to see, above.  This is a hugely variable moth in both size and colouring - and pattern, with in this one. And that is quite apart from the fact that males and females each have their own different looks.

Inside...

...out

Other visitors included this matching pair of Willow Beauties, one inside the moth trap's cowl, the other outside. And the trap played host to yet another Poplar Hawk moth, below, followed by two Flounced Rustics and the engaging 'bull's horns' micro Pammene aurita.