Scary eyes

I thought that I would give the moth trap pride of place today, coinciding with sunset on a quiet Summer night. I always enjoy the different effects of the lamp on the surrounding greenery - or sometimes, in Winter, snowscape - and the way that the mercury vapour bulb starts off pink, develops a purplish core and then settles down into a cool, minty glow. 

It continues to keep busy and full of variety, including this Vapourer moth, a slightly sinister-looking species it seems to me, with its very pronounced 'eyes' staring blankly from a dark 'face'.  It gets its name from the strongly attractive pheromones released by the flightless females to signal their presence to males. As a result, only males ever visit the moth trap and they look male too, with their Denis Healey eyebrow antennae, shown in more detail below.

Another welcome visitor was this Marbled Green, a species new for this year in my garden and one with traces still of the initial range of greens which fade rapidly as the moth ages. Following that is yet another Tree-lichen Beauty, a very rapidly increasing recent arrival in these parts whose ability to hold on to its green is greater.

Brimstone moths with their welcome splash of vivid yellow in the gloom of the trap are also very common at the moment, almost matching the daily total of Mother-of-Pearls. Here's one alongside an ichneumon wasp and that delightful moth, the Sallow Kitten.

Lastly among the macro-moths, here are a couple of Square-spot Rustics and then we have the large micro Donacaula forficella, with fewer dark markings than usual, perhaps through wear and tear althjough the Micro-moth Bible says that the streaks along the forewings vary in intensity.

And beyond the moth world, I played tag with this Common Darter dragonfly below and later a fine male Brimstone butterfly, a glorious species which is usually the first of the year to appear and the recurs at intervals throughout the Summer. Happy times!