All clear

There are endless advantages to having a hobby from the simple pleasure it gives to the more complex psychological needs which it no doubt fills. But one of the most practical is that it makes you a very easy person to buy presents for. When I was a boy, this might have been the sinister-sounding 'Get him a killing bottle' or a set of entomological pins; this year, my top present (from Penny needless to say) has been a new moth trap cowl.

This is the transparent collar which encircles the bowl of the trap and holds up the mercury vapour bulb and, as I have mentioned several times in posts, it is a long time since it was tramsparent. The ratio of masking tape to plastic had become almost unbearable and the remaining plastic was rubbed and scratched. Behold the difference, above, between this venerable but failing item and its glorious successor which I unwrapped on Christmas Day.  

I have put this out tonight for its debut after a brief interlude when we took the grandchildren to the local skatepark to try out their scooters and inline skates and found this delicate little lacewing on their car widow, speckled with droplets from the very thin mist which has hung around all day. I also had to dry out the eggboxes in front of the fire, a toasty position which they shared with some of the same grandchildren's drying laundry

Then it was time to peel off the shiny new collar's protective film and plug everything in. I can't wait until morning to see what, if anything, comes to take and an admiring look. Last night drew a visitor total of nil, after the delightful Three Wise Moths of Christmas night. It is still mild but very misty and we had a bonfire and some fireworks, so the odds are balanced.  Sleep well!

Merry Christmas from my festive lamp conversion

Hi all and I hope that you have a lovely Christmas and wish you all good things for the New Year. I am hoping to attract three Wise Moths over the holiday although it looks as though they will have to have travelled from very afar, being a type of Ghost moth endemic to New Zealand.  All warmest and here's hoping for more everyday but interesting arrivals in the New Year! 

Update on Christmas evening: Well, I DID get Three Wise Moths but not from the Wiseana family. They are an excellent trio for this time of the year, nonetheless: a smart Winter moth, A Mottled Umber and finally a Cypress Carpet, a relative newcomer to the UK which is flourishing like the green bay tree.

Encouraged by this and by the pleasant mildness of the weather, I have lit the lamp again tonight, this time without the possibly slightly deterrent effect of my home-made star. Let's see what happens...

In the bleak mid-Winter

 I'm not sure that it actually is mid-winter quite yet but there's some sort of solstice on 21st December - goodness, tomorrow I mean - so we can't be far away by any definition. Not the most prosperous time of year for moths, then, but they are still about. Before it turned cold again, I put out the trap for a second and third night after my last post and a very small handful of visitors turned up.

Two to be precise, both Winter Moths and both in good and rather attractive condition. The sceond one obligingly spent the night inside the plastic cowl and so I was able to photograph its underside, although I'm sorry that the picture is a bit blurry. The cowl is very battered after many years of use.

I put the trap close to a wall with a lot of ivy in leaf nearby in the hope that hibernating moths might be lured out. No luck this time but my moth-minded granddaughter and her brothers roll up here on Sunday night so we'll all have another go then.

Very quiet - but not completely

 

It's been suddenly mild after a couple of cold snaps and so I lit the lamp again having originally decided that things were over for 2024. I was encouraged too by this glorious sunset which made me wonder if the moths would all ignore my trap and follow Epicurus who in the famous words of Lucretius 'fared afar beyond the flaming ramparts of the world until he wandered the unmeasurable All.'

Perhaps they did, because the sole new arrival was this spindly Common Plume. A pleasure for me to see and photograph but definitely not enough to interest my gluttonous robin, below, which flew away empty-beaked.

There was also a very bright Moon which is known to divert some moths into a hopeless attempt to fly the 238,855 miles from Earth.

And at the bottom of the eggboxes, two December moths which arrived at least a week ago. Dead, sadly. They could have easily have flown to freedom but preferred to hunker down and expire, something that I've often noticed before with many types of moth when tucking the trap away in the shed out of robin reach. Theydo not eat and perhaps they have mated and are programmed to hide rather than risk birds and bats and so have nothing left to do.

Basking in the Sun

The question which ended my last post was answered helpfully at the weekend when I was walking into Oxford to meet Penny and saw a brilliant flutter of wings in the bright sunshine. It was a Red Admiral which swooped around a few times and then returned to the brick wall where it had been basking - yes, genuinely basking in the warmth of a December morning, a rare interlude between recent rain and fierce cold. 

The butterfly was so content that it allowed me to get up close and take the second photo before I left it to carry on sun-bathing. Back home in the roofspace where I have been sorting piles of old papers, a third Buttoned Snout put in an appearance. However dark and cobwebby, it's definitely their kind of place.

I'm not sure what the equally contented-looking fly is in the picture above but there's all manner of insect life amid the rafters. Here are some old wasps' nest, lifeless thank goodness, built by a Queen who must have hibernated somewhere comfy in the insulation fluff.

The warmer spell encouraged me to put the moth trap out and I was rewarded with a nice clutch of December Moths and one very gracefully patterned Winter, Autumnal or November Moth which obligingly perched on the trap's transparent cowl so that I could photograph it from both on top and below.

My proceedings were watched carefully throughout by a Robin but he didn't manage to pounce on anything while I was looking the other way.