Autumn colours

Two Feathered Thorns came last night and you could be forgiven for thinking on first glance that they might be different species of moth. The yellowy, softly-shadowed one above is unlike any other I have had in the trap before. The one below is the usual form.

Both are males with their excellent antennae. Their solitary companion in the trap was a dozy Sprawler - like the Feathered Thorns, the possessor of a nice warm, furry collar on its thorax.

As is my habit if we're asked out, I took these moths to some friends who had kindly invited us for lunch. The moths behaved well after a little initial panic and settled down on a window to admire the view. We had such a nice time that I completely forgot about them and it was left to our host to chase us down the street with the moths in our granddaughter's collecting box.  Thank goodness. I didn't need the moths but would have got into trouble if I'd lost the box.

We liberated the moths on the spot and they flew vigorously away in the dusk. Barring interception by bats or birds, they have started a new life - and perhaps new families - seven miles south of here.

Whiskery gents

As happened last year, I find myself making the mistake of thinking that the season is over and then being surprised new arrivals. I put the trap out rather absent-mindedly on Monday night, not expecting anything much, but the morning brought this very welcome bunch of Sprawlers. The species is named after a curious reflex of its caterpillar when threatened but it always puts me in mind of a John Buchan style gathering of gents in a club, as below.

It's partly the name, which conjures up Harry Enfield's incoherent old buffer in his armchair, and partly the tweedy outfit of the moth. Mind you, the beads of dew on the lower left one in my first photograph obscured the pattern so much at first sight, that I thought that I was dealing with something else altogether. Here is how it looked, below.  It must have been deathly cold.

Two of the other three Sprawlers were in the eggboxes while the third had a perch on the bulbholder, below. Another new species for this year was the Winter Moth or rather two of them and the guest list was completed by a Feathered Thorn.

Previous Pasha

 

As an epilogue to my last post, I thought that I should show you a photo of the only other time that I have seen a Two-tailed Pasha, on the serpentine island of Meneghello near Hvar in Croatia some 20 years ago. Unlike the hill-topper in Provence, it was swooping about on a beach and took cover in a fissure in the rocks - there is scarcely any sand in that part of the world. I managed to get the photo above but then it was off, and it did not come back.

I overlooked a discovery in France as well, a very familiar caterpillar which Penny saw scuttling across a forest path on our way back from inspecting an ancient 'rucher' or apiary, surrounded by warnings that bees can sting. I've already featured quite a few of these larva thanks to my granddaughter's excellence at spotting and breeding them - the Pale Tussock, or 'hop dog' known and often cursed by Kentish hop-pickers who reacted to the mild toxins on its hairs.

The beehives in hollowed out cork oak were fascinating. Known about for years in documents, they date back to the 17th century but were only rediscovered and restored in 2006. New hives were installed and now house more than 5000 Provence black bees. The forests of sweet chestnut, cork oak and arbutus - the last the larval foodplant of the Two-tailed Pasha as I mentioned in my last post - suit them well and their honey is most flavoursome.

Back here, I put out the trap last night in spite of the chilly weather - maybe warmed as well as illuminated by Guy Fawkes displays. I'm glad I did. My first December Moth of the year arrived in its smart fur coat, along with two Feathered Thorns.  Here's the December Moth:

I moved it to our beech hedge for the Autumn colours, to remind me how early it has come - in terms of its name.  Last year I did not record one until December had begun, although I was trapping very intermittently,  And now here are the Feathered Thorns, one on the cowl and the other in an eggbox.

Finally, one a wall beside the light, I found this, below, which I think is a Satellite but I am studying further.

Oh, and a little non-moth too: