I have grown blasé about the Jersey Tiger after seeing no fewer than four round the granddaughter's trap plus regular glorious meetings on holiday in Greece. So it took me time to realise that this visitor in my first few photos today is a first for our garden here in Oxfordshire. Rather extraordinarily, we had one in Leeds in 2008 but never yet down in these parts.
It is my sixth new arrival this year which began memorably way back on St Valentine's Eve with the debut of the Oak Nycteolene and has continued with the Buttoned Snout, Kent Black Arches, Brown-veined Wainscot (just last week) and the micro Anania perlucidalis which must have been here often before but always mistaken by me for a small, very similar Mother-of-Pearl of which I get hundreds. I must add them all in to my species list.
Other excellent moths flew in alongside the Jersey Tiger on a balmy warm evening, something of a treat given the weather this year. As below, there was a big Gypsy Moth with its antennae like a hare's ears, a very fresh Treble Bar, an op-art Black Arches and a Sallow Kitten with its wings partially outstretched rather than in the usual tightly-folded resting position.
Away from the trap, P and I had a fascinating time at the current Franz Kafka exhibition at the Weston Library in Oxford where other visitors were treated to the sight of this curious insect below. We can't recommend it too highly; a highlight is the way that the iconic photos of the writer which have created a lasting image of a tortured, lonely soul were often cropped from much more cheerful scenes, standing beside a fiancée, for example, or even sitting with a barmaid and stroking a friendly dog.
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