If only moths were this colour

One of the delights of Summer is the appearance of Common Blues on our local field edges, flying jewels which may be common but are also uncommonly lovely. We have the grandchildren here at the moment but I keep sneaking out to see if I can repeat with better focus the picture I got of one below with parts of its bottom wing almost irradiated by turquoise because of the way that they have caught the light.

I have often bemoaned the lack of blue in UK moths - only a couple have even a version of it - the common Small Angle Shades and the rare Clifden Nonpareil. The latter is becoming more frequent in our part of the world at the end of Summer and I live in hope that it will be my turn to see one with its hindwings' band of mauve this year. But, exciting though that would be, it is mauve and not the glorious blue of its humble but heavenly butterfly relative shown here. The deficiency must be something to do with the disadvantage of blue for night-flying insects though what these may be, and why blue helps a day-flying butterfly, I have yet to discover. On the latter point, the world's most famously colourful butterflies, the Morphos of South America, are all manner of exquisite blue. So is the most exciting butterfly that I have ever caught, Papilio Blumei, which I netted after a hectic and unforgettable chase in Sulawesi, Indonesia, many years ago.

These days I am happy to hunt with a camera, even though this is requires much more stealth and patience with lively butterflies than soporific moths. Here are some of the others about at the moment: an immigrant Painted Lady above, a species immediately distinguished from the wobbly, fluttering Ringlets and Meadow and Hedge Browns but the powerful flight which enables it come from southern Europe and even Africa on jetstream winds. And below the delicate Marbled White, Small Tortoiseshell and Red Admiral, along with a day-flying Cinnabar, bottom right, a sort of honorary butterfly though it is officially a moth.

Another in that line is the Scarlet Tiger below. At this time of year, when I get calls or emails about unusual local moths, I can be almost certain that they will be Scarlet Tigers. The name comes from their vivid red underwings which flash brightly in flight but are usually concealed, as in this picture, when the moth is at rest.

Now for some of the trap's contents in the last few days: below, a Light Arches neatly in an egg slot, the standard and much more common Dark Arches, a cigar-stub/twig Buff Tip from the side and head-on, and an Eyed Hawk with shot-up trailing edges to its wings like a fighter plane which has had a rough time in a dogfight.

Then we have an intruder: a neat little Yellow Shell which preferred our porch to the trap and remained there undisturbed all the following day.

Finally, we have one of the few micros of which I am fond, the Green Oak Tortrix whose green is both vivid and an unmistakable way of ID-ing this member of an otherwise peskily difficult tribe. Then there is a Light Brocade (I think) and a Common Wainscot whose slightly oddly-coloured 'shoulders' are a result, I suspect, of digital photography's ways with light. Bringing up the rear are a dark form of the Marbled Minor and a couple of examples of that graceful, delicate, fluttery moth, the Mottled Beauty.