Multiple moths

Hooray! The warm weather has settled in and the moths are arriving in droves. Thursday night's star was the Marbled Minor which came some 50-strong - three of them above. And it wasn't just moths - flies were abundant too and, since I had forgotten to spray myself with Autan, two of them managed to nick a bit of my blood. I spotted the hornet - below - in time, thank goodness, and decanted it into some grass far away to continue its doze.

There was a host of Maybugs, or Cockchafers, as well and the first of the regular crop of Difficult Brownish Patterned Moths which always stretch my faltering ID powers. I think that the prominent one in the picture below is a Large Nutmeg, but I have to admit that this is a guess. Even after trapping for 14 years. Shame on me!

You can't mistake the chap below, though: the UK's third-largest moth, the Privet Hawk. His arrival was providential as Penny and I were due to spend the day with my 90-year-uncle and it was great to take him a couple of other visitors.  The Privet Hawk was one and a nice pink Elephant Hawk, the other. Both should now be settling in comfortably at Tewkesbury, the Privet Hawk appropriately in a nearby privet hedge. One of the many fascinating features of moths is their practice of laying their eggs on their caterpillars' food plant or plants. So if this is a pregnant female, all should be well.

Here's the Elephant Hawk, below, followed by a sequence of pics of that wonderful creature, the Longhorn moth. Midget of body but vast of antennae, the 13 UK species are hard to tell apart but my guess is that this one is Nematapogon metaxella. 

Watch out! There's a fly coming

Mmm, it's getting a bit close

It's tickling! That's enough

I'm off. Thank goodness for effective antennae.

Now for a Treble Bar, as opposed to the nightly flock of Treble Lines - second picture below - which are almost as numerous as the Marbled Minors at the moment:

And next that pretty creature, the Clouded Silver, followed by almost equally attractive Buff Ermine and a Light Brocade, a moth which is only locally common and that only in the South. The moth with it is another Treble Lines, in a slightly different colourway from its relative above.

And so to conclude for today with that small master of dazzle camouflage, the Scorched Wing, whose patterning blurs the eyes and often confounds my camera lens. The second picture shows its distinctive habit of arching its small body up in a way which must surely have some link with attracting the opposite sex - the necessary organs being at the tip of the tail. To the disinterested human eye, it looks more like an odd mushroom or - the camouflage effect in a different form - quite a convincing leaf.