Red Moths in the Sunshine

A pleasant surprise at this time of the year is the daylight appearance of one of our larger moths, the initially modest-looking Red Underwing. It keeps its glories hidden when at rest when it resembles a small Vulcan V-bomber with its camouflage-patterned grey forewings forming a neat triangle.

Its arrival is an annual event but still startles me after so many years of running the light trap, probably because of the fairly routine species of moth which come to the eggboxes during August. This year it was a neighbour who alerted me by sending the top picture of two moths roosting typically in a shady corner which he wanted to identify.

I obliged and then went out into the garden through our back door which opened with an unusual flutter and plop. There on the threshold, upside down, lay a fine and almost certainly newly-emerged Red Underwing, alive but clearly stunned by its fall. I have never seen this before; moths usually get their flying skills going in a tumble but big ones like these need time to exercise their wing muscles if they have been asleep. It was providential for me because normally they are very unwilling to show their brilliant petticoats, just like the much commoner Yellow Underwings which unfailingly whirr off when my granddaughter tries to coax them on to her fingers.

So here it is, with the bold warning colour almost fully-exposed above and then, below, tempted without any problems to a photogenic spot. After a few minutes, it recovered its powers of movement and crept onwards up the wall to settle just below the gutter. Three hours later, it was still there, motionless, as dusk fell.

The following afternoon, I was washing-up in the kitchen before heading out to do some gardening in the sunshine, when a major amount of fluttering and swooping announced the presence of another of the moths. They are happy to fly by day, which does at least give vivid glimpses of the scarlet, and this one rather unusually in my experience, perched on an electric cable up the wall and basked like a Red Admiral.  Happily, the grandchildren had arrived for a week's holiday with us, and I whizzed in and got them all out to admire this singular moth.

They were also pleased, later than evening, to see our cat Taco watching the trap; interesting that his eyes allow him to look at the very powerful bulb in a way which would very quickly dazzle our own. I think that he was watching both the occasional moth jinking in and also a pair of bats circling above, but he didn't dare creep any closer.