Spotted and Dotted

I was saying only on Tuesday that completely new moths here are a rare occurrence, after 20 years of light-trapping. Now I have had my second in three nights. It's one which I have coveted for a while; the Four-spotted Footman which has long been a rarity but now - like many other such moths - seems to be finding our warmer climate agreeable.

Previously, I would have been much more likely to find one in France, as one of my great-nieces did in Brittany ten days ago. It was dead - her Mum's pic is below - and in a corner of their room with equally dead flies, so she naturally came to the conclusion that they were its favourite food. But like the overwhelming majority of moths, the adult Four-spotted Footman sips only at nectar; its caterpillars do the eating, interestingly of lichen.

 

Why 'Four-spotted' when it seems to be spot-free, though very smart in the manner of all Footman moths, a neat appearance which gave them their name in the 18th century? The answer is in Richard Levington's exquisite paintings from the Moth Bible; it is only the female who has the spots, two on each forewing, one of which is hidden in the wing-furling when the moth is at rest.  The moth is much bigger than the other UK Footmans, or should that be -men? Altogether, a very satisfying catch.

There is also a Four-DOTTED Footman which has the same gender difference in its wing patterns and is slightly commoner although I have never seen one. Here's hoping.

Here below are a couple more pics of my Four-spotted; as with almost all moth species, the male is likelier to come to light thane the female, being out and about more in search of a mate, but again I live in hope.

Elsewhere in the eggbox, snoozing visitors included a Common Plume, Emmelina monodactyla, which is almost as faithful as the Poplar Hawk in its Summer-long visits, a Small Bloodvein and a Six-striped Rustic. 

Time for a Name Campaign

 

There are so many campaigns these days, given the lamentable state of the world, that you may not have the energy to join a new one. But it is surely time that the Old Lady moth was renamed. It's a long time, even in Greece, since elderly women dressed in clothes like this poor old moth's.

It's as out-of-date as the road sign for the elderly which has often been re-imagined to show what a spirited lot we over-70s now are:

And our grandchildren made the point by giving Penny two good children's books as a present, one about a traditional Granny from times past like the Old Lady moth's name, and the other a thoroughly contemporary funster:

Let's see.  There's recently been a very successful move to give micro-moths English/vernacular names as well as their cumbersome Graeco-Latin ones which help international scientific co-operation but can intimidate the amateur. That's well-explained by its prime mover below. Maybe reform in the world of insect nomenclature is on the march.

 

Meanwhile, here are some of my other visitors - a Rosy Rustic, a Small Dusty Wave (very good name indeed!),  a Yellow Shell and the tiny little Least Carpet.

A new fan of Leyland Cypress

 

A new moth for me has come calling: the Cypress Pug which shares both the appearance and the taste in caterpillar foodplant of the Cypress Carpet. Both are relatively new for the UK as a whole, perhaps having found out about our otherwise unfortunate national liking for Leyland Cypress hedges.

The Cypress Carpet, shown below, first visited me on 17 July 2021. It made its debut in the UK in 1984 when the first was recorded in East Sussex. Thanks to the hedges, no doubt, it has since flourished mightily and is now a regular here and across most of the South of England.

Back on the Pug, this made landfall at Lamorna Cove in Cornwall in 1059 and has since spread in much the same way as the Carpet although it has taken longer to find me.  There is no scientific connection that I know of but both little moths strike me as diminutive versions of the Pine Hawk - incidentally the only one of my regular hawk moths not to show up this year, so far.  Here's one, to see if you agree:

Here are a couple more Cypress Pug shots, one with the wings outstretched, the customary resting position for pugs, and the other its underside, courtesy of the trap's transparent cowl.

What else have I to report? Here's a nice Frosted Orange, like my last post's Centre-barred Sallow a harbinger of Autumn, followed by a Large Fruit-tree Tortrix, a large 'micro' indeed, and a couple of current regulars, the Flounced Rustic and the Straw Underwing.

Sulphur and Brimstone

 

There's a yellowy-orangey theme to this post, triggered by finding the lovely fresh Brimstone moth above in a pose which shows how the sulphurous colour extends to its whole body. It looks as though it has just flown through a tin of Dayglo powder paint. 

The orange component meanwhile comes from this Centre-barred Sallow, the first arrival of a brightly-coloured family which I associate with late Summer and early Autumn. Like everything in the natural world, they are out early this year because of the heat.

Here's another orange star, a Dusky Thorn, and below, three pictures closing in on a Copper Underwing to give a rare glimpse of the reason for its name:

The delicate little Green Carpet in the first Copper Underwing photo was one of at least a dozen of this pretty species - a prettiness which quickly fades. Here are two of them making that point, below: a very fresh one at the top and a fading example at the bottom, probably several weeks old.

The same fate will overtake this exquisite Light Emerald, so beautifully green in its freshness. If it survives the birds and bats for a fortnight, it will be a pallid version of its glorious, initial self. 

Captured Hooks

 

The Hook-tips are stylish moths with something of the shape of a modern American stealth bomber about them. Each is attractive on its own but last night I had the pleasure of two different species: the Oak Hook-tip above and the Beautiful Hook-tip below.

The Beautiful Hook-tip deserves its name, with the subtle colouring around the actual hook. It is only locally common in the South of England and rare in the North but it has always paid me annual visits here.

We have a fine, upstanding oak tree on the edge of our garden although sadly the drought is causing it to shed acorns at the moment by the barrel-load. Somewhere in all its branches will the annual breeding ground of the Oak Hook-tips which also visit me every Summer without fail.

Here they are together - both species tend to go for the cowl and the walls of the trap rather than the eggboxes, perhaps because they always spread their wings widely when at rest.

And here's the underside of one of the Oak Hook-tips, conveniently visible through the cowl.

The same applies to this very dark Snout, the 'Pinocchio Moth' with its very long palps like the puppet's nose; its underside is above and topside below:

Here's a Copper Underwing, always an unusually jittery moth which emphatically does not share the placid dozing of most of my visitors when I inspect them in the morning: 

And finally, a Purple Thorn and a Straw Underwing; both new, I think, for this year.

Bursting out of its skin

 

Even after all these years, my adventures in the moth world bring me new experiences and I've just had another one, courtesy of my eagle-eyed granddaughter. We were walking along the canal when she spotted the very small but exciting caterpillar shown above, immobile on the stem of a plant in a tub which was almost dead from lack of water in the current drought.

It was so inert that I thought, after a while, that it might be the shedded skin of a caterpillar, burst open in the wholesale moult which affects these little creatures at regular intervals. They munch and munch and grow and grow until they literally burst out of their skin. This is left behind and the shiny 'new' caterpillar gets busy with the munching straight away; bursting again at regular intervals until it emerges from one such change as a chrysalis.

Well, I wasn't so far wrong. The caterpillar was alive and well and not a skin. But it was getting ready for the change. We popped it in a box and the next morning, this is what we saw, above. The newly-shed old skin on the left and the bouncy new caterpillar on the right.  Full of energy, it set off to explore a vine leaf, below, before I decanted it into one of our walnut trees.

I chose the walnut because the caterpillar is that of the Vapourer moth and the only previous time that I've seen one was on a branch of the walnut when I was making repairs to the roof of the children's tree house. It's best to keep your distance from those fierce-looking hairs and spines. They can cause a rash if your skin is susceptible to such things.

Meanwhile the moths keep coming whan I light the mercury vapour bulb in my trap. Recent arrivals include the Latticed Heath below, butterfly-like in its resting position:

Then I had a couple of Rakish Angle Shades moths:

A Tawny Speckled Pug:

A Chinese Character with its curiously distinctive resting pose like a small pill:

And the very attractive micro Anania coronata which calls by occasionally to give me the time of day: