Almost twins - but not quite

 

The beautiful Prominent moths with their streamlined shape and purposeful resting position always provide some of my earliest stars in the trap. Here are two which can very easily be confused as one: the Swallow Prominent at the top and the Lesser Swallow Prominent below.  The most obvious difference is the thicker white spearhead on the Lesser moth red arrow below) but note, too, the more complex patterning in the dark area at the bottom right of the folded-back forewing (yellow arrow).

The eggboxes are gradually getting busier as Spring goes on and the weather warms up. Here are some recent guests: a Lunar Marbled Brown, a Nut-tree Tussock, an Early Grey (always reminds me of tea), a Common Quaker and again with a Clouded Drab and finally another Common Quaker in very good, fresh condition and a Brindled Beauty resting on a box of very good value eggs.

Away from moths, P and I had an interesting encounter with flies at an open garden in the pretty village of Kencot near Lechlade whose owner kept pigs. That meant dung and that in turn meant dung flies, in this case a vividly golden species, at least in the brilliant sunshine which blessed the event. Other visitors thought that they were horse flies and kept well away, but my trusty iPhone identified them, not surprisingly, as Yellow Dung Flies.  They were almost beautiful - and went nicely with much larger flying objects thundering down overhead at regular intervals on their approach to Brize Norton air base.

Spiders next. We were visited that evening by the biggest spider we've seen in this house since we moved here in 2013.  Appropriately, like the Yellow Dung Fly, it is a Giant House Spider, not so giant, however, that it could avoid P's handy spider-catcher with electronic suction.  Once bottled, it was popped outside in the garden, thus becoming at least for a while, a Giant Garden Spider instead.

And lastly, beetles. This exquisite jewel of an Alder Leaf Beetle was an unintended bonus on a posy of common wildlfowers which I picked for friends after walking along the canal to their home in Oxford.