Long time, no see; an old school pal

This has been a vintage couple of weeks for me, with a third new moth arriving in the continuing, lovely Summer weather. A new moth, that is, since I started running the light trap more than 20 years ago, but actually an old friend from my caterpillar-breeding days as a child.

It is an Oak Eggar, a species which perversely has nothing to do with oak trees; its larval foodplants are the likes of bramble and sallow and, especially in my native Yorkshire, the heather of the moors. That's where we used to find the caterpillars and take them home in a variety of jam-jars with string carrying handles looped round the neck and a paper top Sellotaped in place after holes had been pierced to allow the catties to breathe (and sometimes to escape). There was actually ample air in a jam-jar for many caterpillars over a complete afternoon, but I suppose that our precautions did our little Methodist souls credit.

The caterpillars in due course spun a cocoon whose vague resemblance to a large acorn is often credited with causing the 'oak' part of the name just as 'eggar' is said to derive from its other resemblance, to an egg. Whatever the truth of that, there is no doubt about the richness of the moth's colouring which entranced us as children during the magical process of the adult insect's emergence which we sometimes saw.  The male is a deep and velvety dark brown; the female - as in this case - a sandier colour. She is larger too.

I'll leave her looking at us, and go on to examine the other guests overnight which included three more large moths, the hawks Elephant (another great breeding success in childhood), Poplar and the second largest moth in the UK, Privet. Here are the Privet and Elephant with the Oak Eggar below, plus a couple of tiny ermine micromoths for fortuitous comparison.

Above is the Privet Hawk about to take off - a fine sight. Below we have a Large Yellow Underwing and a Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, both modestly hiding the reason for their name; then a Poplar Grey beside another ermine and below that, a Tree-lichen Beauty with a Common or Lesser Common Rustic.

Next another Large Yellow Underwing but one with delightful orange-brown colouring - this species is famously varied - and then another fine example of a similar colouring, an Orange Swift.

Common Wainscots continue to be, well, common, but the Cloaked Minor is a less frequent visitor, albeit a regular. Below them, we have a tiny micro which I have yet to ID and then one of the smart new generation of Shuttle-shape Darts which is just emerging.

Next, a Small Mottled Willow with its very micro shape for a moth which is actually a macro and finally a Flame Shoulder (the only moth to have flown into the ear of one of the compilers of the Moth Bible), a Common Wave, a Brimstone and a Dark Umber.  Beautiful moths all! How much I enjoy their visits!

Checking the boxes

Penny and I were in touch the other day with a friend, Andrew Hazelden, who makes marvellous pottery and is also interested in moths. He now has a studio at Bradfield in Berkshire but he used to work in Yarnton, a couple of miles from here, where he turned the dull hues of slip clay into glowing colours.

We wrote to thank him after buying a jar with a very appealing owl, a bird which has been of great fascination successively to our three grandchildren when small. Back came a nice reply, complete with a picture he had painted of another and more eminent moth-ing friend of his, David Lees of the Natural History Museum.

I'm grateful for Andrew's permission to show it here because it exactly sums up how I feel in the mornings in high Summer when examining my catch. I wonder if David ever has assistance like mine this week, however. Our cat Taco has taken a sudden 9 but fortunately harmless) interest in what I am up to.

Dr Lees' work as an expert on moths and butterflies is fascinating and there is an interesting example here about a detailed re-examination of a 'dusty old moth' at the museum collected by Alfred Russell Wallace which led to the discovery of 11 new species, one of which has been named after the climate activist Greta Thunberg. 

My own activities have been prospering in a more modest way with the repeated arrival of examples of one of my favourite species, the Black Arches. This one allowed me to show a glimpse of its pink body hidden beneath the black-and-white dazzle pattern of the wings. As you can see, Taco also took a benevolent interest. Curiosity did not kill the moth.

Here's the dazzle, below, an exquisitely delicate pattern which disguises the moth's shape by disorientating the observer's eye. I always add the rider to this that it has that effect on human eyes. We would have to ask Dr Lees if he thinks that birds and other predators are affected in the same way. You can contrast the pattern, the standard version, with the interestingly different, smudged version of the moth which visited me the other day and appeared in this previous post.

I'll just end with a few more arrivals, to try and keep pace with these very busy times. Here is a Yellowtail, curling up defensively and showing the reason for its name, a warning flash of gold which may also be a sexual attraction device, given where it is on the moth's body.  You may remember the other example which came recently but kept its glories concealed - second picture below. 

Plus a Scalloped Oak with the banana-coloured micro Agapeta hamana or the Common Yellow Conch, a Common or Lesser Common Rustic, a Red Twin-spot Carpet and a Dusky Thorn. On we go!

Butterflies of Bernwood

 

Bernwood Forest is a local butterfly shrine which I try to visit every year in search of Purple Emperors, but their high season always coincides with a very busy time for us and so it proved again this year. I finally found time to head over there on my bike this week, a sunny 14-mile ride which would be both enjoyable and good exercise. Or so I thought.

Alas, the weak point of my bike is the back tyre, which has to carry the weight of my considerable self. I was actually wheeling it uphill rather than riding when I heard a neat little 'Whoosh!', an experience I've not had before. My punctures are usually silent. I was about nine miles in to my trip. Did I walk for the nearest bus home? Perish the thought.

I marched on and enjoyed trying to find short cuts including one through a local golf course whose groundsman was extremely helpful in pointing me the right way. When he asked what I was doing on such a hot day, I discovered that he had encountered an Emperor himself. He told me: "I was working here and doing something to the buggy when this great big purple butterfly landed right on the machine. I'd never seen anything like it and luckily I got a photo and looked it up when I got home." 

"Well, you've seen one more than most people, including me," I told him.

This is true in terms of live ones in the UK but I've always admired the butterfly - as everyone does - because there was one in the small collection of insects given to me as a schoolboy by John Armitage, the marvellous head of natural history at Leeds City Museum whose virtues I've extolled here before. Penny and I also saw and photoed a near relative in the beautiful French village of Saint Jean de Côle in the Aquitaine in 2011. Here it is. Yum!!

There were no emperors awaiting me at Bernwood but the trip was worthwhile because of a mass of Silver-washed Fritillaries, a majestic butterfly. Here, also from a French holiday, is the species' striking underwing which explains its name:

I got to the forest about two and a half hours after the puncture and, though very hot, had a lovely time wandering about. It's not an outstandingly beautiful place as the Forestry Commission is active there and a lot of the paths are tarmac or gravel, but the grassy verges are full of flowers at this time of year and the flowers are restaurants for a lot of butterflies.

My highlight was actually just one flower, or a plantation of it, a very big burdock above a culvert which was clearly THE place for Silver-washed. At least a dozen orange males and chestnut females soared and floated over the spiky flowerheads alongside Commas, Hedge Browns and Large Skippers. Normally, fritillaries lead you a merry dance and settle only briefly, but these were drunk on burdock juice.

Given burdock's role in the invention of Velcro, it was interesting to see how some of the butterflies got slightly caught by the little curly spikes and had to be nimble to break free.

On the long plod home, I had an enjoyable chat with an expert thatcher; however hot and tired I was, he was working a lot harder.

I was kept going by my water bottle, a delicious apple which Penny had prudently provided and the occasional encounter with more butterflies including this rather late-in-the-season but very smart Marbled White.

And then my goal, after handy reconnaissance on the invaluable internet: the bus stop and a majestic ride home on the 108, a country bus which I had never previously tried. Its timings were almost as rare as Purple Emperors but fortuitously coincided with my own. There was only one other passenger to Oxford and he got off halfway.

Red Petticoats - but not what they seemed

 

I featured the magnificent Red Underwing a couple of posts ago and I was virtually certain that I would soon find one in the trap. So it turned out, with this lovely example roosting happily on an eggbox a couple of nights ago.

It was very obliging during a short photo session. I always tickle and gently shake the various underwings to overcome their great reluctance to show their vivid warning colouration, other than in a brief flash whose sudden-ness is probably part of the defence against predators. I managed to get a glimpse of the underwing too and some detailed shots of the delicate grey and slightly brown patterns on the top forewings.

Therein lay the next stage of this story. I always assume that a moth like this is the standard and common Red Underwing, partly because of the sheer number of very similar moths. None are common and most are very rare, but we have in the UK Minsmere Crimson Underwing, Rosy Underwing, French Red Underwing, Dark Crimson Underwing and Light Crimson Underwing.

I dutifully recorded my moth on iRecord as Red Underwing and thought no more of it until I got an email from iRecord today. It showed that the great moth expert Martin Townsend, co-author of the Moth Bible, had reclassified my moth first as Dark Crimson Underwing and then as Light Crimson Underwing. Both are Red Data Book species, the national UK list of endangered species, and I have never had either before. Here are all three species, from the aforesaid Bible:

I'll keep you in touch with whatever the final decision turns out to be. Meanwhile, here are some more of the current rich crop of night-time guests in the garden here:

Tree-lichen Beauty, Turnip moth about to leave, Blood-vein and Small Dusty Wave - the last on the inside of our greenhouse door.

Burnished Brass, Rosy Rustic, Iron Prominent and Dark Arches

The attractive micromoth Acrobasis advenella, also called  the Grey Knot-horn in the excellent new list of English vernacular names for micros.

And another lovely micro to finish up with, the Ringed China-mark