One of the moths which I left unidentified in my last post turns out to be another new species for my garden, the seventh this year. I asked for help on the marvellous Upper Thames Moths blog, apologising for being so dim about what looked like some commonplace sort of Rustic species, and the all-knowing expert in charge of that site, Dave Wilton, identified this as the only locally common Olive. Hooray.
I thought briefly that my other failure to identify was an eighth newcomer, a Cabbage moth. I was right in my suggestion but wrong to think that I had never had it here. I checked my list of species and discovered that I was visited by one in our first year here, 2013, and then a Cabbage Moth caterpillar appeared on florets of home-grown broccoli in our fridge four years later.
My latest favourite in the trap meanwhile has been this Beautiful China Mark micro, above, Nymphula nitidulata, a moth which flourishes near watercourses of which we have many, including the river Cherwell and the Oxford Canal.
Other arrivals are shown above: Bloodvein, Angle Shades, Common or Lesser Common Rustic, Coronet, a Plume micro whose exact ID I must pursue, Chestnut, Burnished Brass form juncta, Green Carpet and Whitepoint. Meanwhile I enjoyed stalking my first Common Blue butterfly of the year in the UK along the canal towpath where it had taken a shine to a scrap of hosepipe.
It distracted me from getting a good picture of a water vole swimming across the canal with frantic urgency, a very dangerous moment if there had been a heron around. The best I could do with the camera was this blurry snap of it almost reaching safety, below.
And finally a sad photo of a wren mysteriously dead on our lawn. I'm glad to say, however, that our garden wren population is flourishing and they are constantly trying to find out where I hide the moths after inspecting the eggboxes in the morning.
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