Macabre end

Sorry to start with rather a grisly picture but, as anyone who studies Nature well knows, she is sticky in web and venomous in sting, as well as being red in tooth and claw. In the sunny weather we've been enjoying for quite a few days now, my eye was caught by an unexpected glint and glimmer in our greenhouse. It turned out to be this spider-captured (and -killed) dragonfly.

Another curiosity was a butterfly in the moth trap, not an unprecedented event but very rare. With the current long Summer evenings, it wasn't fully dark when I lit the lamp, which probably accounts for this Meadow Brown spending the night in unusual company. I've been looking back over past Julys to check various moth arrivals and, lo and behold, I turned up this identical butterfly overnighter (left) three years ago.

Among the moths, it was good to see the Lunar-spotted Pinion, above, with its distinctive crouch. It is a very occasional visitor, so nice to have one back.

This next arrival, above, though quite a handy size, is actually a micro, Hypsopygia glaucinalis by name and one of the largest of the tiddlers' tribe, whose caterpillars have the distinctive habit of eating thatch. I must keep an eye on the children's treehouse which is thatched with reeds collected by myself with much effort from the River  Cherwell.  The catties also eat bits of birds' nests so I will encourage them in that direction. Penny and I keep finding old nests during the endless but enjoyable pruning and cutting-back which comes with trying to manage our garden.

I puzzled over my third moth for ages and eventually gave up and asked the experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog. Their leader Dave Wilton kindly tells me that it is a Green Arches, a lovely moth which doesn't figure on my records list. Actually that is an oversight as I trapped one in Leeds during the first year of this blog, 11 years ago. I need to update the list anyway, as it happens, as previously unrecorded species arrive every now and then.

Here are two of them: a Small Blood-vein, above, which I have got on the list but without a picture to prove it, following a big muddle I got into over this species and the rather similar Small Scallop several years ago. So that's sorted.  And below, a male Dark Umber. In July 2015, I trapped what I am pretty sure was a female (second picture) but never confirmed it with anyone and so did not list it. I will now put both to Upper Thames and hope for double confirmation.

The next moth may be a third new arrival, a possible Galium Carpet which spurned the trap and snoozed on the adjacent wall instead. Because of the species' similarity to the Common Carpet, the latter's variability and the poor photo, I am tacking it on to the presumed Dark Umbers in my UTM blog query.

As for the rest, we have below a Poplar Grey, a Lime-speck Pug (one of the very few pugs I can safely ID), a Carpet and a Small Emerald which scooted off the trap's lid when I opened things up but only as far as this nook in the un-mown grass.