Plenty of variety in spite of chilly nights

 

The nights are cold now and the moths are fewer in number but the variety is holding up well. Above is a Large Ranunculus, a buttercup feeder as a caterpillar; a pleasant guest to host in the light trap's eggboxes.

After examing these yesterday, I encountered a Dock Bug sunning itself on a Sunflower leaf. When I reported it to iRecord, I received a grateful confirmation within the day. Unlike the massively overburdened moth checkers, who don't have the capacity to check for ages, the bug people are probably grateful when anyone sends in a record of any kind.

I also faithfully reported a huge influx of Daddy Long-legs or Crane Flies, most of which were amorously ensuring that a next generation will be on its way soon.

The moth side of things is currentl greatly brightened up by the various types of Sallow. Below from top left we have Barred, Pink-barred and the two dominant forms of the ordinary Sallow. Below them, in the same order, behold a Common Marbled Carpet, a Box Moth (dreaded by all owners of box hedges),  a Pale Mottled Willow and a Willow Beauty. 

Thence to a couple of delicate Light Emeralds still with their original green quite strong, a Beaded Chestnut and a Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing.

Finally, last night brought a couple of White-points (an exact translation of their Linnean surname albipuncta), a Straw Dot and an Angle Shades with that very delicate violet and greenish tinge.

First in, Last out

 

You may know from previous posts, if you have put up with my ramblings for any length of time, that the Clifden Nonpareil has a special place in my heart. As a boy, this was the moth I dreamed of seeing most, knowing that it was all but impossible for this to happen in the UK.

And then, about ten years ago, reports came in of occasional sightings in the South. Gradually they became more frequent. By 2018 there had been several in Oxfordshire. And in 2019 the glorious day came when one arrived in my light trap.

Since then, they have visited every year except 2023, usually in mid-September. But this year my first came remarkably early, on 7th August.  Since then, they have stayed away, until Friday night. Look what I fiund when I sorted the eggboxes (blessedly free of hornets now that the weather has gone colder).

It was a fine-looking specimen in the eggbox and when seen from below and was sleepy enough to submit to my amateur methods of measuring its size.

But when I enticed it to reveal its hindwings on the relative safety of our bedroom windowsill, they were alas sorely-faded. Very little remained of the dazzling blue which makes this species so special. 

I released it on to our wisteria and then sorted a comparison on my iPhone with the vivid example which came back on 7th August. Note, though, that this early one had already gone prematurely bald, perhaps after a collision or a bird or bat attack. The new one was much more hirsute in spite of the faded colour. Perhaps the latter happens simply over time as is the came with the Emerald moths which lose their luicious green colouring within a few weeks.

Other visitors were welcome too: several Rosy Rustics, a Least Yellow Underwing, a ghostly Pale Pinion, a shy Shuttle-shape Dart and that modern success story among relatively recent immigarnt moths in the UK, a Cypress Carpet.

Cold but busy

 

The weather has got markedly colder especially at night and very especially for those of us who have just been luxuriating in sun-blessed Italy. The seasonal moths don't mind, however. My first lighting of the lamp since getting home attracted a large and varied haul.

The Green-brindled Crescent shown above is the best of them, a wonderfully-marked moth which would repay a much better camera than my sturdy iPhone. I am also very fond of the contrastingly plain Autumnal Rustic in my second picture; it looks like a Puritan chaplain in Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army.

The Lunar Underwing is arriving prolifically in all three of its colourways, grey, brown and beige - the grey one below going nicely with my beautiful turquoise walking socks. The sinister looking Black Rustic is also coming on stream.

Here's a brown Lunar Underwing below, followed by a Sallow, a species redolent of Autumn,  and finally for today, a Snout, which glories in the apt Linnean 'surname' of proboscidalis.

Bella Italia

 Penny and I have been away for ten days in Italy where moths have the lyrical name of Falena and the language also commendably includes a specific name for the very small number of micromoths whose larvae damage clothes. They are called Tarma. An older-fashioned phrase was in use when I was a boy and we hunted hawk moths around a café on the coast near Ancona, using a ladder kindly lent by the proprietor to reach the powerful street lamp bulbs which attracted our prey. In those days, they called them Farfalla notturna or 'butterfly of the night'.

This is a common practice in many languages but you need to be a bit careful. In Malay and Indonesian, for example, Kupukupu (butterfly) malam (of the night) also means a prostitute.

Our stay in Verona and Mantua was lovely but not insect-rich. My first picture shows a familiar species, the Hoary Footman, which Penny spotted on the stairwell wall of our Verona hotel. On the rough lawn of a nearby palazzo we then found Grizzled Skippers and a species of Blue in considerable numbers, but they were as jittery as most butterflies and I am afraid that my photos are not ace.

A different skipper, the Mallow one, awaited us at the delightful small, fortified village of Sabbioneta near Mantua (near, that is, once we had mastered the idiosyncrasies of the No.17 bus) where a trio of beautiful and very lively Painted Ladies almost lured me over the ramparts' edge.

Here's the actual rampart; the butterflies were spiralling around the bramble bushes which overhang the rather sever drop, looking deceptively like firm ground.

My efforts were rather outdone by my younger son's Instagram posts from Texas where he was on an architectural mission whose secondary benefits included some encounters with wonderful crickets/grasshoppers. Here below are a fabulously-coloured Plains Lubber, a Western Horse Lubber and a tarantula out for a scuttle in the sun.

Back in Italy, there was one more actual moth to see, a pretty little Vestal on a cobbled street in Mantua - a species which comes here in the UK in reasonable numbers in late Summer and early Autumn but only as an immigrant visitor, never setting up permanent home. Italy is very appropriate place for them; their smart colouring resembles the outfit of the Vestal Virgins who looked after the temples of ancient Rome.

Otherwise insects swarmed only on the wonderful and numerous Renaissance wall paintings, sometimes in half-human form as with the cherub below who has butterfly's wings.  Whether they would be strong enough to get his chubby little body aloft, who can tell?

And there was this, by a contemporary artist in an expensive shop. What if the lady's elaborate headdress suddenly took wing?

What else? A darting lizard, one of many in the lovely weather which blessed our entire stay, and a dragonfly with an eloquent list of alternative names: Violet Dropwing, Purple-blushed Darter,  Violet-marked Darter and Plum-coloured Dropwing.  The dropwing part comes from their habit of lowering their wings immediately after alighting, which a swarm of them duly did on the edge of one of the three lakes which form such a lovely backdrop to Mantua.

And so back home - to be greeted by our first Morning Glory flower.  They are exceptionally late this year and we're just hoping to get a decent display before an untimely frost of the type which prompted Shakespeare's metaphor on poor Juliet.

Summer is igoen out

Excuse my parody on the famous song in my title but I fear that the lovely days of sun and warmth are over for 2025. We may yet get an Indian Summer but I doubt that the temperatures will rally very much, and the moths of Autumn are already visiting the trap.

The Feathered Thorn above is an example, while the yellow-orange Sallow family have been around now for a few weeks. What with the hornets which stagger sleepily over the eggboxes first thing in the morning, the business of trapping and recording is getting a little harder.    There is still fun to be had, however, for example in spotting the peculiar places into which overnighting visitors cram themselves. The Brimstone moth peeping out of an eggbox cone below is a good example.

Away from the moths, the Natural world continues to surprise and intrigue and sometimes sadden as well. Penny has been peeling thick ivy off a wall and she discovered a recess from which a stone had fallen and inside it a dead Blue Tit. Its wide-open beak suggests panicky last moments of its life and we assume that it was trapped.