Clockwork Moth

My Clockwork Moth came two nights ago, the neat grey Pale Eggar which I first mistook for one of the Kittens, Sallow or Poplar, with their distinctive pattern faded. It has the same light grey tones and crouching habit when at rest with its wings spread broadly over its back like a cloak. It was very dozy and allowed me time to take plenty of photos while I pondered what it might be.

My nickname for it comes from its regular habits; it first called here in 2015, then 2020 and 2023 and now in 2026. After the initial five year gap, it seems to have settled for an appearance every three years, perhaps because its caterpillars are known to overwinter for a second time, although not always. It cannot feed as an adult insect and therefore leads a short life. I am grateful to be included in its rounds.

By contrast, I have learned a little more about a different visitor, the Lime Hawk which I mentioned two posts ago after iRecord responded with an initial 'Out of season' automatic message. Similar visits have since appeared on the Upper Thames Moths Facebook page, all of them new to their recorders at this time of year. The long hot Summer has clearly brought us a second brood which is very unusual for this fine species.

The trap continues to attract welcome new visitors for the year such as the Toadflax Pug below, a very small but beautifully patterned member of a family whose other members can be dull and infuriatingly difficult to tell apart.

 

One of its companions was a Purple Thorn whose delicate mauve is an absolute delight, and no fewer than six Oak Hook-tips, one of my moth success stories of 2026.

Meanwhile the butterflies continue to be out in force although they must be having a hard time finding nectar, a problem at least avoided by the Pale Eggar. Lawns and borders everywhere are shrivelled and brown or sandy-straw coloured. Last night, we were lucky enough to visit friends whose boat is moored at the end of the beautiful community garden of St Ethelwold's in Abingdon which is watered from the Thames and not affected by the hosepipe ban. What a relief and delight it was to enjoy a fabulous display of flowers and a green, green lawn.  I often think about the intensity of colour in everyday things like the sky on a clear day or the English countryside in normal conditions. This was another example and hugely refreshing.

On the butterfly front, here's another of my examples of a not terribly good picture of the underwings of a Holly Blue which was flitting around our patio yesterday, sipping any moisture it could find and resolutely refusing to show its glorious azure topwings although you can enjoy them indistinctly when it is in flight.  And a fantastic photo of a Large Copper by a friend of my older sister's with a wonderfully toning background. Thank you for the treat!

I'll just round things off with three more of Friday/Saturday night's moths: a Poplar Hawk in fresh condition, a Latticed Heath in its usual 'Let's pretend I'm a butterfly' mode and a lovely bright Centre-barred Sallow.

The Bee and the Virgin Bud

 

The biological imperative to mate is fantastically strong, as anyone interested in natural history soon discovers. The birds and the bees...and in this case the bees indeed, via a telling spot by Penny who saw this bumblebee struggling to get at the un-touched nectar inside a tightly folded virgin hibiscus bud.

Goodness, how it tried! But in vain although its liberal dusting of pollen showed that it had been successful elsewhere. In the end, it gave up reluctantly and settled for a fully open flower. 

Appropriately or otherwise, we spotted this Smiley on the thick coat of pollen covering its rear end. 

The episode got me wondering how the many butterflies brought out by the endless sunshine of this Summer are finding nectar in a countryside scorched by drought. Here are some which discovered lucky solutions, starting with a Painted Lady in our local garden centre.

The Oxford University Botanic Gardens were another good place to look. They are exempted from the hosepipe ban and although they are being prudent and the lawns are desert-like, the herbaceous border is lovely. Interestingly, Golden Rod is flourishing in the climate-related 'Merton Beds' which are never watered. Plenty of butterflies were flitting about including the Red Admiral on the left which chose to rest after a spell on the ever-popular buddleia on one of the visitors' benches. Like its relatives the Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell, the species often basks on pre-warmed brick, stone or wood.

Here's a Peacock below, resting this time on crumpled paper close to another small oasis whose owners live in a terrace by the Thames.

So to a few moths. I forgot to record the Vine's Rustic on the right below, perhaps looking jealously at its more distinctive Rustic relative, the Flounced. I often miss undistinguished moths like this, possibly including newcomers, try as I might to be thorough.

News of other people's moths: my younger sister spotted the Small Dusty Wave below on a German sleeper train and learned that in German it is described as the Grauer Zwergspanne or Grey Dwarf. It was first recorded by a German scientist,  Franz von Paula Schrank, in 1802 so their name perhaps has the prior claim. Schrank was also a priest and presumably much like the English country clergy who became great naturalists for want or neglect of other things to do. 

Cousins in the West Country meanwhile enjoyed a rare visit from a Convolvulus Hawk moth, a rare visitor and the UK's largest moth. Penny and I memorably enjoyed the company of one at another cousin's wedding in Cornwall some years ago.  And a friend of my older sister's in France had the ultimate butterfly delight of meeting a Two-tailed Pasha, the Continent's finest butterfly. We saw them in the same village a few years ago, an unforgettable experience which I posted about here.

And lastly, a sign of life in our own scorched garden where the flowers are struggling to keep up nectar supplies. A Common Field Grasshopper looking like a small version of the doomladen Biblical locust.

August Visitors, but welcome ones

The Chinese poet Ch'ēng Hsiao warned long ago against admitting visitors in August because they came only to escape the heat and would ruin your own tranquility and the cool of indoors. But this is definitely not the case with my first two moths today, both of which I think are new to my list.

The first is the smallest Plume I have ever seen; its tinyness is clear, I hope, from being seen in the context of an eggbox below. I studied the micromoth Bible and concluded that it had to be a Hemp-agrimony Plume, Adaina microdactyla, which is substantially smaller than all the others - in the book it appears at twice life-size so that the remarkable artist Richard Lewington can do it justice.

Dave Wilton, the invariably kind and patient authority at Upper Thames Moths agrees and I have sent the details to iRecord under that name and will wait and see.  I may never be quite so definite with my second moth today which will probably have to remain a claim rather than a certainty.

Dave warns about the difficulty of identifying UK members of the Cyclophora family because they can be so similar, and also because some of the rarer ones have spread remarkably in recent years. That is the case with his best guess, a Jersey Mocha, which was first recorded in the UK only in 1999 and then belatedly confirmed after a dissection put its identity beyond doubt four years later. It has since spread both as an immigrant and a probable colonist and there have been eight records in the Upper Thames counties with other sightings recently. I did not keep the insect but the photograph has gone to iRecord so we will see.

The problem with this graceful family may be seen in my next moth below, a Maiden's Blush, and the family also includes the Mocha which came to me for the first time only last month and, although distinctive usually, can resemble these moths when faded. It would be agreeable to have a Jersey Mocha so soon after being visited by a Jersey Tiger, especially as I have cousins who hail from Jersey.

My undoubted Lime Hawk moth which also slept in the eggboxes has meanwhile been questioned by iRecord's initial robot-conducted sweep as 'out of season' which again shows the movements under way among our moths, doubtless because of the heat. It is my first this year and joy to behold. We may forgive it for arriving so late. 

Other graceful arrivals include two Oak Hook-tips, several delicate Common White Waves both in and on the scorched sandy lawn near the trap and finally on my pyjamas, and a Vestal. 

A Centre-barred Sallow brings intimations of early Autumn, the high season for the Sallows although we have weeks to go, and the Box-tree Moth is still around, the bane of neat hedge-growers.

Finally we have the micro Carcina quercana or Long-horned Flat Body - a strange name indeed among the welcome new English coinings - and a handsome Swallow Prominent from above and the side, showing its fine 'racing car' lines.

Watching the Sun go out

Last night's solar eclipse was a marvellous experience which tugged at the root of what it means to be human and part of a community. We had to be in London and so made for Regent's Park where we swapped our home-made pinhole camera with children's converted cereal boxes, special specs bought by the prudent before supplies ran out and even the occasional colander for tiny, multiple images.

Here is a sequence of our own little sun, carried through the most home-made of cameras constructed by Penny, a sheet of cardboard with a very small hole pierced by a screwdriver. The final picture in my first quartet was taken through the viewing-specs lens of the kind woman with the black umbrella.  What a terrific experience!

P's invention also multi-tasked as a fan on the very hot train to London and a picnic tray on the journey home - shown above with my colander hat which in the event we left at home because it was too big to take with us.

I didn't put out the trap last night what with all the astronomical excitement but the moths have been coming steadily if unspectacularly for the last few very warm nights. On one of them, I placed the trap on a table beneath our Temporary Heatwave Gazebo which produced a rather ethereal effect: 

Here are some of the arrivals, from top left down: European Cornborer micro, Marbled Beauty, Common Purple and Gold, Elephant Hawk (the first for a few weeks after a flood in June and July), Sallow Kitten, Chinese Character, Waved Umber, Six-stripe Rustic and Light Emerald from below: 

Then Tawny Speckled Pug, Single-dotted Wave (with its many dots), Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, Orange Swift, Cypress Pug (on the gazebo roof; did you know that 'gazebo' is an invented word contriving a future tense in Latin style for 'gaze'), Snout, Broad-barred White, Frosted Orange and another European Cornborer.

Finally, I have given this specially lovely micro a full picture of its own; behold the aptly-named Beautiful China-mark with a more modest companion whose ID is still be sorted out by poor old me. And a lovely fresh Anania coronata micro, known in the US as the Elderberry Pearl and here more aptly as the Spotted Magpie, contrasted with a more battered one which visited in June: