Holiday finds

   I am terribly behind - age and the lovely weather, sorry. So here's a catch-up from mid-July when P and I had a marvellous week in a National Trust lodge to Oxburgh Hall near King's Lynn. On the first day of the Great Heatwave, the neighbouring village of Santon Downham was the hottest place in England.

We survived. Indeed, a moated castle with foot-thick walls is a very good shelter from 40 degree temperatures, plus the National Trust café served a delicious iced coffee. Just before we went, P was drawing the curtains in our sitting room and discovered an Old Lady moth, probably seeking somewhere cool to lie up.

Digital cameras mess around with colour but actually the Old Lady can appear in all these three shades, depending on the light

   These are fine moths in terms of size but their funereal colour and patterning conforms to very outdated 'Old Lady' stereotypes. 'Old' ladies these days wear jeans and have purple hair. I've always liked the moth since teenage days when a cousin and I caught one on rum-and-treacle at our uncle's Suffolk rectory. They had two old ladies from his previous parish staying and when we rushed in yelling 'We've caught an Old Lady', there was initially consternation. It was also exciting, three years ago, to be tipped off about a hundred or so of them aestivating - summer hibernation in very hot weather - on a cool spot under a local canal bridge.

   Oxburgh and around yielded a fine collection of butterflies and some decent moths (no light trap but the lavender attracted a Mother of Pearl and plenty of Hummingbird Hawks and a Dusky Sallow took refuge in our bedroom on the hottest night). There were also lots of damsel and dragonflies patrolling the moat and streams and Pam Taylor of the totally excellent British Dragonfly Society kindly, and very swiftly, identified the one in the composite photo as a male Emperor Dragonfly and the one in the large picture below with its odd blue 'eyes' as a Brown Hawker.

   We also encountered this evil-looking but apparently harmless fly below in large numbers - ID much-appreciated from any passing dipterist - and saw a good collection of birdwing butterflies in the Lynn Museum's section of Cabinets of Curiosities, although I think the caption should read South east Asia rather than South America.. 

   Finally, here are some other artificial beasts and holiday views: a rare 'Peter's Pence' lectern which took the annual donation for the Pope through its beak and excreted it from its bottom; and a magnificent fish graffito - both at Oxburgh church. And then a glider, a man-made moth, just after landing near the National Trust's extraordinary Lyvenden New Bield.  The house isn't a ruin. Work stopped when its wealthy commissioner died in 1605 and has never restarted since.