Creeping about

I was hard at work on our treehouse yesterday, preparing for eventual reunion with the grandchildren, when my eye was caught by a slight movement - that great betrayer of wild animals of all kinds. There on the plank I was sawing was this spectacular little chap: a Vapourer moth caterpillar.

I can't tell you how many photos I took of him or her - thank goodness for the power to delete from a mobile phone. But here's a selection, as I tracked his or her extremely rapid pilgrimage all over the walnut tree. Some of them give the scale - he or she was at an early instar or stage of the caterpillar skin-shedding cycle - and the last one needs an arrow to show him or her beetling off.

 I have written 'him or her' repeatedly because the Vapourer is one of those moths in which gender makes a striking difference to appearance. The male is quite a character as you can see in Richard Lewington's brilliant paintings for the Moth Bible below, with one of the most frightening pairs of 'eyes' in the moth world. But look at the poor female: wingless and not much more handsome than a very large woodlouse. And that after a period of life as one of the most spectacular caterpillars you can find in the UK.

By coincidence, which so often plays a part in human experiences, look what I found, a couple of pictures below, in the moth trap yesterday morning. It isn't enormously interesting, at least to me, and I haven't tracked its identity down yet though a friend suggests Angle Shades which looks a good match. But it has the distinction of being one of very few caterpillars that have ever made their way, somehow, into the bowl.

The eggboxes were meanwhile busy as ever at this time of year, mostly with familiar arrivals but here are two species which share unusual appearance with being newcomers for 2020. The Muslin Footman is unlike any other member of its family and also has an uncanny ability to make photographs blur or possibly, for such is the effect of dazzle camouflage, appear blurred.  The White Plume is a lovely creature, more widely seen than other UK moths because you send them spiralling around when you walk through long grass in Summer. 

Elsewhere in the natural world, I came across two centipedes mating while I was turning over part of the vegetable patch (while praying for rain). I was going to call them just 'centipedes' until I Googled and found that the UK has 57 different species including the fine-sounding Eason's Geophilus and the Common Cryptops. Needless to say, given my record with moths, I made little progress in deciding which one these are so I will return to square one and report them to the excellent iRecord simply as centipedes.

Talking of iRecord, I had my first actual rejection yesterday when I sent in the picture below, proudly thinking that I had even nailed it as the hoverfly - and we have over 280 species of them - Chrysotoxum bicinctum. Back came the admirably prompt reply from Dr Roger Morris, a retired ecologist and co-organiser of the UK's Hoverfly Recording Scheme, that it was more likely a Digger Wasp, of which the UK boasts more than 110 different kinds. This figures, because it was fascinated by a masonry crack.

I am on safer ground with the next picture: our solitary local Lizard Orchid which has started flowering in spite of the very dry weather which was scarcely relieved yesterday by very light showers. And finally, the fledgling season sadly brings its toll because our house has too many windows and the poor learner-flyers sometimes fail to see them.