Not so fast

My many errors on this blog are usually to do with ID but every year I also underestimate the number of late delights in the trap. I have been very tempted to stash the big bowl, lamp and its coils of flex during recent damp and dour weather, but that would certainly be premature. And the change in the clocks this morning brings a welcome hour of extra light.

Look at this nice surprise, for example: a big and fresh, male Feathered Thorn, a moth which I had shamefully forgotten and which will be around until late in November. It was sitting yesterday morning on the bowl side, whose very dark background sends my iPhone mad, but I think that the small photo on the left shows its antennae well enough. They are reason for its name.

Here it is again from the front, and below on the edge of an eggbox where I coaxed it in the hope of getting a more focussed picture. I left it on a windowsill - the background of my top picture - where it was still resting safely in mid-afternoon.

Another late-flying  moth which I had forgotten and which paid me a call is the Red-line Quaker below and I had my first visit of the year from a Large Wainscot. Large is right. And talking of large, I found an unusually jumbo November or Pale November moth asleep on an eggbox. I hope that the cone gives the scale. I don't know why some specimens of the same type of moth can be so much bigger than others, regardless of gender, but suspect it will be related to their dietary succees, or otherwise, as a caterpillar.

Among slightly unusual late arrivals, too, have been this Angle Shades below, a Shuttle-shape Dart and the T-shaped Common Plume micro, Emmelina monodactyla (one of the Linnaean names which I actually like, perhaps because I have an Emily granddaughter and had an Emily Granny. I've just discovered from Wikipedia that in the States it is sometimes known as the Morning Glory Plume which is a terrific name too for such a little scrap.

Among my more predictable visitors at the moment have been these contrasting forms of the lovely Green-brindled Crescent, a moth of which I never tire. Left, the standard version and right the form capucino which lacks the green scales or has them only in very small quantity.

Staying with green, Merveille du Jours are still visiting daily, along with the delicate little Red-green Carpet. Both species often prefer to overnight on a nearby wall rather than inside the trap.

Finally, two examples of the variation we encounter in moths: a very pale Sallow, which can often look much more like scrambled egg, and an unusually ornate Beaded Chestnut (unless it's a Lunar Underwing but I think and hope that I am right this time).

Oh, and I almost forgot: Penny found a 'Woolly Bear' caterpillar in our home-grown lettuce, after shed had washed it. The cattie thus got washed too and we released it into the rain, but life isn't easy for caterpillars and they are tough.