Boo!

When we ask our two-year-old grandson what we should say on meeting assorted other members of the family, he invariably replies: "Boo!"  That is what I think the very large beetle, above and below, was saying to me when I turned over an eggbox in the moth trap and found it clambering about.

I think that it may be a Great Diving Beetle which had made its way to my lamp from the nearby Oxford Canal. Its carapace was the most lovely shiny black, like the finish on japanned furniture.

Among the moths, it was good and unusual to get a prolonged view of this Ruby Tiger's hindwings which are usually kept closely hidden. The moth is extremely tatty and cannot have long to go in its short life, but it was energetic enough to first scuttle and then fly off.

Otherwise in the composites, here are - above clockwise from top left: Rosy Rustic, Shaded Broad-bar, Clouded Border and Marbled Beauty, and - below clockwise from top left: Straw Dot (on plant beside the trap), Blood-vein, Pyrausta purpuralis micro and (though I'm guessing here) Juniper Pug.

A quick diversion into butterflies next: the grandchildren's garden in Walthamstow gave me a lovely sighting, but no photo, of a Jersey Tiger, an immigrant moth making excellent progress in southern England, and later on this Holly Blue butterfly, skittering around the neighbour's wisteria which is enjoying a second flush of blooms.

Back home, another night's trapping brought me the moths below: clockwise from top left: a male Ringed China-mark micro (Parapoynx stratiotata), another of the same with fresher colouring, a Smnall Fan-footed Wave (I think) and a Scalloped Oak.

Then we have a Common Swift, a moth which will appear in ever-increasing numbers of the next few weeks I suspect, and a comatose Pine Hawk. There was a Poplar Hawk in another eggboxes and these big and lovely moths are enjoying a very extended season since the first came to see me in early May.

Finally, illustrating the continuing variety and large numbers of moths this lovely summer, my composite below shows, clockwise from top left: Tawny Speckled Pug, second generation Early Thorn, Marbled Beauty and Yellow Shell.