Stand in the Corner

I could blame the pandemic but I'll be honest: laziness led to my recent crop of mistakes which have been corrected kindly by Edward from Calderdale in Comments below my last two posts. I say 'kindly', but actually I fear that one of the causes of my sloppiness is an unconscious feeling that Edward will put things right if they are wrong. Dependency, in other words.

Not very creditable - but I was pleased to see eminent support for my general approach to such things in the Economist's excellent online Espresso summary of the day's news, which I greatly enjoy and which always ends with a quotation. 

By coincidence, although it has no real bearing on the subject in hand, Lord Keynes' brother Sir Geoffrey was a distinguished butterfly and moth expert as well as a renowned surgeon.

Anyway, two of Edward's corrections bring me joy as well as my usual plans to try harder, because one of the moths involved is new to my list and the other has been here only once. What I described as a Green Silver Lines, which usually comes here once a year, is actually a Scarce Silver Lines, which never previously has, though one paid me a call in 2008 when we lived in Leeds.  Here it is again as a reminder. A lovely moth.

The second moth is a slight variant of the same delightful colour - uncommon in moths and very prone to rapid fading - and it is a Small Emerald, not a Light Emerald as I claimed. The latter is a very common guest. The former, like the Scarce Silver Lines, has stayed away apart from a brief visit to our rhubarb in 2013. Both came on Penny's birthday which, as I mentioned, usually leads to something nice in the moth trap. In spite of my bungling, this year the magic has worked again.

Away from the world of error, here is another example of a moth feeding, this time on a grain of rice from our dinner the other night. I've also added a film of the process, to go with the one by my granddaughter which featured on the blog a couple of days ago.