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.