Pink flush

Elephant Hawk moths are pouring in at the moment along with the biggest influx of Peppered moths I have experienced since we moved from Leeds to Oxford in 2013. Both are very familiar to me but never lose their charm and interest; hence the photo above. The colours are both bright and subtle and have surely inspired artists and designers, especially of textiles. And although few people see the adult moth, unless they are lucky enough to have a light trap, the elephant trunk-like caterpillars are quite often discovered in late Summer on Rosebay Willowherb or creeping quite rapidly about in search of somewhere to spin a cocoon and pupate.

On that score, Penny and I have just been over in Massachusetts to celebrate our younger son's year as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University and we came across this happy family of caterpillars in a communal web on the sand dunes of Cape Cod.

It was cold and rainy but a couple of guys came past and I asked them if by any chance they were entomologists. This rather startled them until I explained about the caterpillars in which they took an interest. After some thought, they said Nope, no idea. 'Fraid we're birders' and I thought was it. However, the following day we were crossing a zebra to an oyster bar in Wellfleet when the car which had courteously stopped for us rolled down a window. A head poked out and said: "You're the entomology guy we mat on Morris Island!"  Small world!  I'd meanwhile done some overnight Googling so was able to tell them the catties belong to the Eastern Tent moth, which live in a bundle but sally forth three times a day to feed (just like most of us).  I passed this on but couldn't go into detail as the car behind was getting a bit impatient.

The moths' habit is exactly the same as these ermine micro moths', spotted here in their own tent on a walk in Wiltshire. The moth is small but the caterpillars are tremendous spinners, responsible for the webs which you sometimes see engulfing entire trees and occasionally cars parked for too long beneath them.

In the trap meanwhile, I have more newcomers for the year, all old familiars but very welcome, each and every one:

Clouded Silver

The Flame - the only moth which sometimes really does make a beeling for your ear

Brown Rustic I think

Burnished Brass form juncta with the metallic sheen dividing the brown crossband

Marbled Minor aggregate (because the various forms are so similar)

Udea olivalis micro with the sinister head of an...

...ichneumon wasp - horrible creatures (by human standards) which lay their eggs in other insects' larvae which the growing ichneumon children treat as living larders. Ugh! 

Orange Footman - a delicate little pill of a moth

And finally the lovely Treble Brown Spot, very small but with delightful patterns and colouring

Eyeing me up

I'm back at the moth trap after ten days away and plenty of guests are arriving in spite of the unsettled weather. Some of the eggboxes were a little damp this morning but this glorious Eyed Hawk moth was unaffected and went along docilely with my photo session on a delphinium.

Here he or she is below as I found him or her when I lifted the trap's lid; a handsome moth but with no evidence of the glorious colours on the top hindwing. There's a reason for that: the deterrent effect on a predator when the wings are suddenly flashed. Whether their 'eyes' create the appearance of an animal to a bird, I do not know, but they certainly do for a human observer.

My other hawk this morning was an Elephant, very common but also very beautiful. And then there was a procession of interesting moths of all shapes, sizes and colours:

A Dark Arches with its familiar jagged marks, a moth which will come in large numbers over the next month or so

Common Marbled Carpet with its subtle markings and soft colours

A Small Magpie micro (one of seven in the trap) and a Cinnabar, both toxic to birds and consequently well-painted with warning colouration

A Peppered Moth and a Willow Beauty

And in a brief break from moths, a Common Carder Bee. The name comes from its habit of making a soft ball of wool for its eggs in a process much like the carding of wool into threads and fibres 

A Dot moth - guess why - and below a Barred Straw with its angular wings like a Lysander aircraft from the Second World War.

A Dwarf Cream Wave and, below, two more of the mini-invasion by Small Magpies

Outside the trap in nearby foliage were this Brimstone Moth and the White Plume micro below - a moth often disturbed from long grass during the day

A Riband Wave - the type with a clear as opposed to grey riband

One of the baffling pugs whose ID sadly eludes me. Help appreciated

A handsome Brown Rustic in excellently fresh condition

A Heart and Dart, one of the first moths to come to my trap over 20 years ago when my report attracted attention from a soap shop in New Yark also called Heart and Dart.

The lovely Burnished Brass, form aurea with the central band complete rather than divided by 'brass' as in the other form, juncta

A Light Emerald hobnobbing with another Willow Beauty

A male Pale Tussock on the trap's bulbholder and below, the same moth from the other side.

And finally a richly-coloured Silver Y to conclude the guests. What will tonight bring in?

Painted Summer

 

Is this a Painted Lady Summer? I ask because this immigrant butterfly has a habit of coming here in waves and one of them was way back in the late 1950s when I saw one in Harlow Carr gardens at Harrogate. It was my first 'exotic' butterfly after a humdrum diet of 'Cabbage' Whites, Red Admirals, Small Tortoiseshells and Peacocks - the last three very fine butterflies but common. The Painted Lady was something else, a subtle mixture of tawny, honey and pink and very fast-flying; naturally my brother and our sisters giggled about its name as well. I can conjure up the sighting still today.

My composite picture above was taken at Oxford Parkway train station where good landscape-gardening with lavender and other shrubs is complemented by a lovely verge of wildflowers beside a ramped walkway up the embankment to the bus stop. The butterflies were romping between the two and we had luckily left enough time between bus and train - the first stages of a journey to Boston, Mssachusetts - for me to stalk them. They tend to be jittery and not rest for long.

The heatwave sun was still beating down as we came into Wembley Stadium station an hour later and there on the tracks was another Painted Lady scooting about. And now, ten days later, here is a further one roosting on one of our hanging baskets where it came to rest after jinking about so dementedly that at first I thought that it was a day-flying moth.

I checked on it at 3.32pm and 7.52pm that day ad it was still there, completely inert and unfussed by my parting the lobelia to get a picture. Ditto at 7.17am the next day. But when I went cycling off an errand at midday, it had gone.

Since starting this post, I have posed my question online and found this satisfying answer straight away in an article in the Guardian, my old employer. Hooray! Of course, the weather has quixotically turned wet and colder since we got back from the US, but there will be plenty of sun between now and October to keep the Ladies content.

Meanwhile our orchid adventures have been closer to home where the magnificent Lizard Orchid which appeared on a very ordinary road verge half a mile away five years ago is in full flower. So is a second plant on the other side of the road and we are going back soon to see if we can find any more. The species is enjoying a very welcome revival in southern England. When we sent the pictures below to the excellent orchid expert Prof Richard Bateman of Reading University and Kew, he replied:

 "Quite extraordinary to see them flowering this early; in my youth I regarded the Lizard as a species to seek out during the last week of June or first week of July; how things have changed. Fingers crossed that your population continues to spread. A few years ago I was called out to a garden in East Hertfordshire to see a Lizard that had miraculously appeared in the lawn. The year before last, 74 plants flowered in the lawn and surrounding area, and the owner's dog was happily cocking his leg at them!"