Sinister street

We've been away for a lovely week in west Wales, but before we left, my last night of trapping attracted this rather sinister visitor. Not only is he or she largely clad in black but the uniform includes what looks un-nervingly like a swastika.

I just had time before we left home to post this picture on the excellent Upper Thames Moths blog and its arch-guru Dave Wilton helpfully advised:  'Could be a dark Ancylosis oblitella which might even be a first for VC23 or else Pyla [Matilella] fusca which I suspect is more likely even though it is an uncommon species. The latter feeds on heather but none of the few Bucks records are from anywhere near heathland.' My conclusion from looking at his two alternatives is that my shady arrival was a Matilella fuscia, with our garden unusually like heathland because of the drought.  Here is a composite of all the pics I took of the moth, so that you can come to your own conclusions:

We didn't see many moths in Wales but I managed to get these two pictures below on our last night, when we discovered that our rented mud-and-thatch cottage had an outside light which I promptly turned on. I plan to spend the rest of the evening trying to ID them. The second picture is abysmally blurry and so may prevent any definite success; but the basic pattern on the wings looks very like the little chap in the third pic which landed on my pyjamas the night before we left for holiday. Indoors, meanwhile, note the evidence from the living room carpet, left, that we were not the cottage's only inhabitants.

We had better luck with butterflies - Smnall Tortoiseshell, Small Copper and Red Admiral - and a helpful dragonfly which stayed still long enough for me to get a relatively well-focussed picture:

And a cliff walk from Cumtydu proved that the local conservation authorities know what they are talking about: 

Finally, in Wales, I was shutting up shop for the night when I noticed this Setaceous Hebrew Character unflappably roosting below the latch. He or she remained unperturbed as I clicked things shut and shot the bolt across to keep out demons.

Back here, this morning's trap had this lovely lacewing, an insect so common that its delicate beauty may easily be overlooked:

Here it is again with a picture of two shiny red-and-black ladybirds snuggling up to a moth and one of my favourite annual visitors, a Peach Blossom.

Other overnighters included two Poplar Hawks, a moth doing specially well this year, and then in these three pictures below, loads of Setaceous Hebrew Characters, whose numbers have reached plague proportions, a Beautiful Plume and a Flounced Rustic, interestingly worn in some places but not others.

Finally, I took by chance a series of pics of that famously nervy moth the Copper Underwing, and here they are: getting flustered, all in a whirl and only finally - and very briefly - settling down in some sort of focus. I know how it feels...