Balmy nights, bumper moths

Bumper days, or rather nights, have arrived and this post runs two of them together; Sunday/Monday and last night when a warm and rather humid Southerly breeze brought happiness to the UK's moth enthusiasts.

I have always like the Small Phoenix, above. Ideally, I would prefer a picture without the camera-baffling black of the trap bowl on which this visitor was sleeping. But had I tried to move him or her, I doubt that he or she would have settled anywhere else. This Carpet-y type of delicate, small moth almost always spirals off into the Great Outdoors.

The Orange Footman has also called in numbers, a neat little pill-shaped moth and the first of its considerable family to arrive this year. Another newcomer for 2017 is the very dark Scalloped Hazel below. I think that it may be the form nigra.

Always a pleasure to have an Eyed Hawk, a cousin no doubt of the one which called last week. And below that are a Rustic Shoulder-knot and a Knot Grass:

Then we have, I think, a Common Carpet, a Red Twin-spot Carpet and a Common Wainscot, the first of that large and varied tribe to come my way in 2017.

I think that the next one is a Lychnis followed by a Square-spot Rustic and that pointy-featured micro-moth, the Garden Pebble, officially cumbered with the name Evergestis forficalis.

Getting to the end now, but the quality of moths remains high: a lovely Purple Thorn followed by a Nut-tree Tussock.

And to end with: the first tadpoles I've seen this year, in the pond of a very nice garden in Steeple Aston, one of a clutch in the village which opened at the weekend under the ever-excellent National Gardens Scheme.  Plus a beguiling lure for flies and small moths: our insect-eating plants are in delicate flower. Be careful, flying friends.