Martin's Moths

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to one and all, moths included

2011-12-28T20:25:00.002Z

Hiya! Hope you've had a lovely Christmas and that fun is continuing through Christmas week; and all warmest wishes for the New Year. We've had the mildest weather for 14 years and although the trap is mothballed, I'm tempted to bring it out again just to see if any wonders are around.

I'm encouraged in this notion by the nightly presence beneath our porch light of Winter Moths including this one, above and below (twice with flash and once without), which perched on the wall, neatly positioning itself over the grout. You can link back via the previous post to Interesting Facts about the Winter Moth (and interesting indeed they are). More soon, maybe...

...and actually here's a little more sooner than I expected (it's now 29 December, almost the year's end. I'm even dozier than usual during this combination of festive holiday and the off-season for moths; but last night I got the Moth Bible down from the shelves, dusted it down and checked the pictures. And I think this may be a November Moth. I will check with Charlie Fletcher as one of my very first New Year resolutions, after the weekend. But any wise comments from passing experts would be appreciates, as always.

Wintertime winds

2011-12-16T20:11:00.001Z

Winter has arrived in the UK, and with it the Winter Moth. I hadn't noticed this one which perched on our stairs and was luckily spotted by Penny before I trampled on it. When I deployed the camera, it fluttered off and ended up perching on the stair rail. As you can see, it folds its wings over its back, butterfly style.

I've written about the fascinations of the Winter Moth at some length on this blog in the past and am too tired after the annual Northern Journalists' Lunch, to repeat myself here. Check out this past entry for more info.

Merry Christmas in the meanwhile, and all warmest wishes for the New Year!

Time to wake up? No! Go back to sleep!

2011-12-08T14:11:00.003Z

Hello! I have emerged from hibernation just to show you something else which has done the same: this Peacock butterfly which has been dozing in our dining room (for overseas readers, that is the only room in a house where English people never have meals).

I know exactly why it woke up. Penny and I have both been working in there and although we have a never-ending struggle over the thermostat (me warm, she cooler), the room eventually reached summer temperatures which deceived our secret guest.

Out it fluttered, beating vainly against the window for a time so that I almost cupped it in my hands and took it outside into the sunshine. I'm glad I didn't. Today has seen hurricanoes of King Lear proportions and it's also cold. Much better to curl up above the curtains or wherever, and go back to sleep.

Peacocks and Small Tortoiseshells are famous hibernators, and account for the theatrical tradition that the appearance of a butterfly on the first night will bring a production luck. This is far from a rare event (although I admit to having written about it in the past as cause of excitement). Theatres are mostly big and have lots of curtains. Perfect Peacock territory.

Sorry the pics are a bit blurred. I had to reach across computers, tables, spaghettis of wire cabling etc to take them. It would all have been risky to move and I am too old to climb furniture.

Martin's mole

2011-11-19T20:50:00.000Z

Look, it's a mini-series. The last post showed my friend Kate, her mobile 'phone and the largest moth in the world. Here's the hand of my niece Annie, her mobile and my mole.

It was a mole. For all its apparent perfection, it is actually an ex-mole. We found it on a lovely walk today to honour my sister Tessa's birthday, from Pateley Bridge to the Sportsman's Arms in Wath-in-Nidderdale (just the best pub) and back. There was no sign of the cause of death. Could it have been old age?

Here it is again with Tessa's dog Kipper. We were with various other members of our vast family, including my older sister Hilary who edits this interesting magazine. The last time that Hil, Tess and I saw a mole together was when I was about six and we were at a bus stop in Tinshill Road, Leeds. A mole appeared in the field alongside (now houses) and a woman at the bus stop told us it was a baby cow.

You remember such things. Here is an actual baby cow from Google Image. (thanks to itsbloggerintime.com)

One big moth

2011-11-14T21:18:00.000Z

Whoops, I'm at it again. Must be the warm weather - we're heading for the mildest November in 363 years. Fact. I'm not trapping, though, just passing on these fine pics from a friend of mine Kate Dundas, who is out in Borneo and - VERY lucky woman - saw this Great Atlas moth alive and snoozing. Here it is, plus a reflection of Kate in her mobile phone, neat eh?

This is the biggest moth in the world; and I have one! Yes. It is dead, I have to admit. My old primary school teacher Miss Cynthia, aka Cynthia Harvey of St Agnes school in Headingley, Leeds, brought it back from Malaya in the 1950s and gave it to me many years later when she realised that I was seriously interested in butterflies and moths.

Here it is from a past blogpost in 2008, the debut year of this long and winding journal. I would have compared it to a London bus but didn't have one - just this souvenir from New York. Now I will return to hibernation (although I will be back soon with more Americana: the Invasion of the Terrible Black Ladybirds).

The village of Moth

2011-11-07T19:11:00.001Z

Hello again - I have emerged briefly from my hibernation (or what in the case of water voles, I have discovered is called 'torpor'), initially with a completely selfish aim in mind. This is to plug the latest product from Wainwright publications - 'The English Village', which has been very tastefully produced by Michael O'Mara (publishers of all those famous Lady Di exposes). It makes an ideal Christmas present, hem hem.

To disguise this blatant self-promotion, I typed 'moth' and 'village' into Google and, lo and behold!, as happens in this interconnected world, up came a Load of Interesting Facts. Pre-eminent among them is a Wikipedia page on a village actually called Moth (see interesting 3D map below from this website but do so in the context of Wikipedia's map which unfortunately doesn't wholly drag across). Do click on the link as it written charmingly in what you might call Indian English and includes the following memorable juxtaposition.

The author writes enthusiastically about the food of Moth, a name created by us Brits via our customary hopeless attempts to pronounce the real, local word, and ends by saying: In summer the speciality is Kulfi of Moth made by Milkiram; it is the tastiest kulfi that you can get for two rupees anywhere in the world In its customary deadpan way, Wikipedia adds: Citation needed.

I shall make it my business to visit Moth before I die, and email Wikipedia with the proof, if I find it.

Goodnight, sweet prince (and princess, and everyone)

2011-10-22T09:12:00.001+01:00

I said yesterday that the trap's solitary Yellow-line Quaker might have a special distinction, but I am afraid that it hasn't. What I had in mind was that for all its modesty, it looked like being the Last Moth On the Blog This Year.

Nope. It got warmer last night and was clearly going to be dry and so I lit the lamp once again and Lo!, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, or at any rate the moths, turned out in force. Loveliest among them was the Feathered Thorn, above, closely followed by a Blair's Shoulder-knot, below, and these two little carpets, Red-green and Spruce I am fairly sure, on the left.

But that is it, for now. See you next year (although, as in 2009-10, I may have the occasional sesh in the winter months). Thanks for all the comments, wisdom and many, many corrections. I do this for my own weird pleasure, but this year I discovered Blogspot's 'Stats' and was astonished and delighted at the range of countries from which people have fluttered on to this site: Mongolia, Argentina, South Korea, Ukraine, Iran. Truly the world-wide web, and if we can all unite in a common interest in moths, hooray. Here's another pic of the Feathered Thorn to help that process on.

Talking of which, I will leave you with a Thought about Why moths rather than butterflies, whose beauty is obvious and irresistible and comes without the worries about hairiness, night-flying and crawling into ears which wrongly attach to moths. Thanks to Penny's recent laundry of our nice, bright Sri Lankan napkins, I herewith present it in picture form.

First, here is how people see butterflies:

Second, here is how most people see moths:

Third, here is how moths really are, when you take the time and trouble to get to know them:

Subtle, pastel shades worthy of Laura Ashley, eh? Or the paintings of my talented American pal, Sarah Meredith.

Farewell for now, then. Happy Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Eid and everything else, and see you in April.

Frosty reception

2011-10-21T08:12:00.000+01:00

We've had the first frost of autumn and guess how many moths there were in the trap? 'None' was Penny's first stab, followed by 'Three?' The answer lies between. There was just one, this demure little Yellow-line Quaker which had a dozen or more eggboxes all to itself. It reminded me of an episode long ago when I decided to take a late autumn break and found myself the only person on a package tour of Iceland.

For all its modesty, reflected in its name, the Yellow-line Quaker is an interesting moth. Apart from over-wintering as an egg on a tree branch, which I've mentioned before, it follows a very gruelling way of life in its earlier stages. When fully-sized, the caterpillar drops from on high into ground foliage like a parachutist whose equipment has failed. I wonder how many die of their injuries. Survivors then dig a small hole, no easy task for a caterpillar, lie in it for several weeks after covering themselves with a mantle of earth or brush, and only then pupate.

They miss the British summer, such as it is, and emerge just as the weather is getting dodgy, to fly until November and lay their eggs for the whole arduous cycle to start again. What is the reason and purpose behind all this? Scientists will have very little idea, I suspect. So much knowledge remains to be revealed.

This particular moth may have another minor distinction which I will reveal tomorrow, if it proves to be the case.

News from elsewhere

2011-10-18T07:38:00.000+01:00

Dark mornings and the colder weather discourage me from trapping, even though reports continue of unusual migrant moths coming to the UK. Quite why they choose the fag-end of October baffles me, but at least two have had the sense to come north, to Yorkshire.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that these new species had just been added to the county list, and here they are: small but prettily patterned and certainly a good excuse to raise the Yorkshire flag - above, borrowed from the website of Simon Cooke, a Conservative councillor from Cullingworth in the Pennines. The first was caught by my endlessly patient moth-identifier Charlie Fletcher, a GP near Ripon and our West Yorkshire county moth recorder; the second by the light trap at Spurn Point, that curious, crooked finger of land at the mouth of the Humber.

Neither has an English name, unfortunately, so Charlie's (above) is known as Etiella zinckenella, named as long ago as 1832 but first recorded in the UK only in 1989. Its normal habitat stretches from southern Europe to the tropics, so the climate change people may be twitching their antennae.

The arrival at Spurn, which joins a long list of interesting migrants making landfall in the area (where the future King Henry IV also launched his successful invasion of Richard II's kingdom in 1399), is Spoladea recurvalis, named by Fabricius in 1775 but reluctant to visit the UK. The first came in 1951 and about a dozen have been recorded since (one in Scotland, so although the moth is also a mainly tropical one, it has an adventurous streak). Many thanks for both species' pix to the ever-excellent website UK Moths.

I will probably have a final go at the weekend, and study the eggboxes carefully for tiddlers such as these. Who knows? If rarities have arrived at the traps of knowledgable monitors such as Charlie and the Spurn recorders, there must be more around.

A nocturnal negative

2011-10-16T09:17:00.001+01:00

I've proved negatives with the trap on chilly nights before, and I thought this morning that I'd done it again. I put the light out in the same place as on Friday night but much later, at around 11.30pm after a night out. This morning, I thought a slumbering caddis-fly was the only occupant.

Even the very last eggbox seemed to be empty, but as I up-ended it, I saw this sweet little sight. Two forelegs securing a small brown moth to the very tip of one of the cones. Our visitors yesterday were asking me why moths like eggboxes, and this is the reason.

It would be nice if the moth were a Brick, a common Autumn flyer, as it landed on a brick, upside down, when I decanted it from the box. I am completely un-nerved by my constant failure to identify arrivals correctly (thanks again to all experts who put me right), but I think that it's actually a Chestnut, although it isn't holding its wings as tightly as the one shown in Waring, Townsend and Lewington.

The Chestnut is a doughty little moth, flying from September through to May. Here it is again, showing the merits of its camouflage, an advantage common to so many moths.

Touch of the blues

2011-10-15T17:53:00.003+01:00

The year presses on but the weather is kind and reports of rare migrant moths still abound. So the light still shines in the garden here, and snoozers in the dawn continue to be varied and interesting.

Last night, a lot of them went for blue backgrounds - although in the case of the Red-line Quaker above that is proof that the camera lies. The moth was actually sitting on the outside of the clear (albeit a bit grubby) plastic cowl, while the trap bowl, at the bottom, is actually black.

The Shuttle-shaped Dart, above, went for a genuinely blue eggbox as did the Blair's Shoulder Knot below (Update: Uh-oh - see Comments). Further update: Ah-ha! I'm sure it's a Dark Sword-grass, so I have got a migrant after all. It's one of the UK's most frequent arrivals from overseas and I remember now that our county moth recorder Charlie Fletcher identified one for me last year. Hooray! We had my distinguished colleague Simon Jenkins to stay last night, along with another old friend, Maggie Bone, whose husband Ron was a marvellous painter. So I'm glad the trap gave me something to show them.

There were some comments on the lines of 'Why are they all brown?', it has to be said; but the wonders of digital close-up won them over. I think.

Handsome latecomers

2011-10-14T11:57:00.002+01:00

I rushed to the trap this morning after learning that the current wave of migrant moths has brought two new species to Yorkshire (details when I learn more), but no sign of such excitements here. There were three very handsome moths in residence, however, including this Feathered Thorn.

I'm inordinately pleased with the photo above, because it shows one of the beautifully feathered antenna which I hadn't noticed with my ailing eyes. This means that the moth is a male. I'm not surprised. As in the picture below, I thought it had a somewhat proud and peacocky masculine look. Its misty pal in the top picture is an Autumnal Moth.

Who doesn't like the Angle Shades, hands up? No-one, good. I'd have sent you to the back of the class. Two perfect specimens were sleeping away, each with that rakish look which makes them distinct from any other UK species.

Tough cookies

2011-10-12T18:25:00.000+01:00

You can see from these first two pictures that the autumn weather is sorting out the men from the boys. Yellow-line Quaker moths like these have got to be tough; they spent last winter as an egg exposed on a tree branch just as their potential offspring will do in the coming months. Then, once mature as a caterpillar, they scrape out a little cavern underground and lie there contemplating for a while before spinning a cocoon and in due course turning into a moth.

This second one is rather more battered but game enough to spend yet another night of drizzle on the lid of the moth trap, finding one of the few dry patches left by overhanging plants. This nice Feathered Thorn, below, had also found a relatively dry spot in an eggbox inside the trap, although you can see from the darker colouring that the rain got into there as well.

It is another species which spends the winter as a tiny but robust egg. I have never gone in for hunting moths's eggs but there are bound to be people who do.

Some moths at last

2011-10-12T07:13:00.000+01:00

This blog is in danger of breaching the Trades Descriptions Act - my fascination with locusts and allied grasshoppers, not to mention jellyfish, means that a moth hasn't appeared here for nearly two weeks.

Sorry. My cupboard is almost empty, although I ran the trap last night and hope to find a few inhabitants there when it gets light enough to use the camera. Roll on the end of British Summer Time.

Anyway, here is a moth - a sad one because it got caught in a spider's web in our kitchen where Penny saw it dangling like a grisly victim of an execution. Another example of Nature's unsentimental world.

Also on moths, the Guardian has had one of its occasional fits of excitement and asked me to write a comment piece on a recent spate of interesting immigrant species, including the lovely Crimson Speckled which I saw in France and featured on the blog back in August. Here are my bon mots, along with a startling and entertaining thread of readers' views.

Chirrupers

2011-10-11T07:26:00.000+01:00

On and on it drizzles and the mornings are far too dark for taking photographs. So here are some final, noisy, Spanish companions and the solitary butterfly I managed to photograph over there.

I don't know if this first large beast is a solitary locust. Anyone brought up on the Bible finds it hard to imagine them in anything other than swarms. In Exodus' words: 'They covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.' That does sound a bit like parts of the Costas.

Meanwhile, this more compact grasshopper lived on a hibiscus outside our window and serenaded us every night.

Butterflies were few indeed. I stalked a solitary Clouded Yellow without success and something middle-sized and brown flew past while I did so. But this Long-tailed Blue - rather blurry I fear - was one of a handful which fluttered around the villas, nervously resting for only brief moments before skittering off again.

The owners of those eyes

2011-10-10T07:21:00.002+01:00

Here as promised are the rest of the creatures eyed-up in yesterday's post, primeval-looking beasts which inhabit the patches of wasteland that survive between the self-contained developments of flats and villas along the southern Spanish coast. These look in October as though someone has poured weedkiller over them; only a few scrubby bits of juniper show green.

Nonetheless they are home to at least two sorts of smallish dragonfly, one green and the other red but neither over-willing to pose for photographs. Looking closer reveals a quite impressive range of grasshoppers, crickets and/or locusts which make mighty leaps when disturbed. If you look closely at this one, on a broken flowerpot which was one of innumerable pieces of interesting litter, you'll discover that it had a little friend nearby (as well as the tiny snail, one of millions somehow surviving in the scrub).

Here's an overview of the habitat, with another green dragonfly if you look closely. If anyone can help me with identification, I will as ever be very grateful, but meanwhile will Google. Rapid update: I think they are female and male Red-veined Darters. I'd also be interested to know why the wealth of bougainvillea, plumbago and hibiscus in the flats' gardens seems to hold little attraction for insects. Mind you, because a lot of people are in residence only rarely, and the developments have strict rules about tidiness, all plants are continuously and vigorously pruned.

The eyes have it

2011-10-09T20:13:00.000+01:00

We've been gadding off again, this time for a debut visit to the Spanish Costas, where the human life is every bit as enjoyable to watch as Mother Nature's. Here for example are some grandes beigneuses who would have had Cezanne in raptures.

They are bathing in mud, which Penny also did but I emphatically didn't. When you'd finished, you were supposed to complete the health-giving process by leaping into the cooler sea on the other side of a forlorn, East Anglian-style spit. But since you were greeted by hundreds of these, below, I didn't do that either.

As for the insects of Spain, there were these eyes. Look at this collection here. Tomorrow I will put up pics of the rest of their owners. Be afraid...

Be very afraid!

Beware, be scared, Hallowe'en is coming...

Be there!

What shall we do with the drunken sailor?

2011-10-02T08:31:00.000+01:00

"I know...hic..there'sh only one needle really..."

The link between butterflies, moths and drink is well-established and known to many a child who has enjoyed rum-and-treacling, especially the rum. Here is more proof: a distinctly woozy Red Admiral which is currently spending all day at a bar we have created in the garden by chance.

What happened was this: we've been cleaning out the cellar and in the process found a small stash of those strange liqueurs which you buy abroad at the end of a holiday in moments of madness. Some dated back to the 1980s and had gone even more peculiar in colour and viscosity than they were in the first place.

So we poured them away at last, the only alternative being to get very drunk in a not very nice way. Several days later, we both noticed this Red Admiral had become inseparable from a small patch of ground near our kitchen door.

Here it is; and because we fairly recently scattered some home-made compost - almost as disgusting as the ancient liqueurs - I assumed that it was enjoying that. Butterflies' and moths' debased diets when it comes to faecal matter or rotting anything are also well-known.

But then Penny remembered the drinkfest; and sure enough, here is the Red Admiral's tongue Hoovering up the residue of Myrtle Brandy or Watermelon Vodka or whatever it was. And the sugars, which will have been copious. Psychologically, the results have been to make it completely fearless and almost tame. Ah the delusions brought upon us all by drink.

Bright pink rabbits

2011-10-01T08:33:00.013+01:00

Morning all! And White Rabbits to you to mark the first of October. Actually here in usually rainy olde Englande it will be tan or bright pink rabbits because we are having the most wonderful Indian summer. Temperatures up to 30C and phenomena such as cowslips coming back into flower under the impression that it is already Spring. If only.

The moths may be interesting too. I've got to be up and about on useful household tasks, so am breaking my usual habits and posting quite a gallery of pics from last night's trap. I will name them at leisure but, who knows, one of my expert Commentors may be fluttering by online and do some of the job for me. Hint.

Have a lovely sunny day! Here are the moths:

Green Carpet

Red-green Carpet

Spruce Carpet and micro friend

Just to interrupt the succession, so it doesn't look too tedious; isn't that last one lovely? This gallery will also help to remind me that the end of September and beginning of October was very lovely and very mothy. On we go... To the right, a Red-line Quaker

Shuttle-shaped Dart

Pink-barred Sallow

Rosy Rustic (not looking that rosy, mind)

Now another little pause, this time to say that there were several of most of these species in the trap and also a great many wasps. Our big cooker apple tree was nearby and the wasps, and some moths, love the fermenting windfalls. I think that this one to the left is a Square Spot Rustic. Next is definitely my pick of the catch; is it a Grey or Dark Dagger? But then it's got that interesting bit of brown. Ah, I've just been Googling and think it's a Dark Dagger of the form rosea named by the eminent 19th and 20th century entomologist Mr Tutt. But no, I'm wrong - thanks to Bill D in Comments I now know that it's a Blair's Shoulder Knot - one of no fewer than three UK moths named after a GP who had the good fortune to live on the Isle of Wight where such novelties often arrive.

Blair's Shoulder Knot

Copper or Svensson's Copper Underwing

Green-brindled Crescent f.capucina - rather battered.

Chestnut

Wasn't that last one nice? And now a couple dozing on the outside of the trap and a good old Common Marbled Carpet to end up with. Sorry this has been a bit of a marathon.

Autumnal moths

Common Marbled Carpet

Willowy and rosy

2011-09-30T00:47:00.000+01:00

This comes to you late at night from the Doncaster-Leeds flyer, the last stage of an epic journey which has included a marvellous spell in and around Peterborough with George Barker, a titan of urban wildlife enthusiasm in the UK, and then a trip on a 'bat punt' in Cambridge with that city's excellent batman, Iain Webb. All will be explained in due course.

Iain and the punt poler Nick Ross-Lewin were chatting as we glided along in the dusk about what they called the 'arms race' between radar stealth weapons employed by both bats, the hunters, and moths, their prey. Here from last night's trap catch is what looks like a powerful weapon in that fight, the delicate set of antennae on a Willow Beauty.

Here's the same moth seen from above, accompanied by one of the snails which fearlessly ascend our garden furniture and sometimes even the house. Also dozing away was this very pleasant Rosy Rustic, unaware how close it was to a wasp - fortunately equally dopey. But now we are passing Elland Road, so I must post, shut down, unplug, go home and sleep. Night night.

Cappuccino

2011-09-28T07:41:00.001+01:00

Here's a nice moth - the sort that keeps me trapping as the nights draw in, the dawn comes later and the wasps abound. I'm 99 percent sure that it's a Green-brindled Crescent of the form capucina, an endemic British creature, only found here, hooray, tarantara. (The capucina, that is; the standard GBC is continental too).

So of course are the cappuccino and Capucin monks after which it is named. Both share the name because of their combination of dark brown and cream, in the monks' habits and the nice drink, and the moth variety has that look too, with its greyish 'head' and brownish body - although as you can see, 'brown' is a simplification. It's a terrific example of the rich but subtle variety of colouring which is one of the great attractions of moths.

I put the trap in a new and very shady area by our pond, btw, with brambles close by. The devil has just about got into the blackberries now and that figures; my moth Bible tells me that the GBC enjoys feeding on over-ripe ones. More of the trap's inhabitants soon... Meanwhile, can anyone confirm to me why cappucino has two ps and Capucin one? Penny thinks it's to do with the former being Italian and the latter Latin. Erudite soul.

Brightening up the autumn

2011-09-26T22:16:00.001+01:00

Early nip of changeful autumn wrote Betjeman and that's what we've got now. Beautiful sunshine and warm days, lovely leaf colours but cold nights and ragamuffin moths, elderly, worn-out; they've seen better days. Even the new ones are sombre, like these three Dark Prominents (Eh? Have I gone mad. Yes. See Comments. There's no such moth. They're Black Rustics which I've often featured here. Age...), lined up in the manner of secret American weaponry on Area 51.

So let's cheer up with one of the Red Admirals which are still enjoying the sunshine, and the last fronds of our buddleias which I keep clipping to encourage fresh growth. Soon the frost will come and it will all be over and I will pack up the trap and say farewell until the Spring.

But not quite yet.

Staying small

2011-09-25T08:37:00.000+01:00

Another tiny this morning. This time I remembered to include something for scale, though Penny pints out that readers won't know how big my thumb is (that large pink blob).

The bigger picture looks to me like a spacecraft parked on the surface of a dark moon in deep space. Also in the trap: two Silver Ys (more reassurance in this year of shortage), a Rosy Rustic and a fantail of some sort. I haven't got down to micro Googling yet because of a rival project throwing unwanted things out of our cellar. But soon...

Very small is very beautiful

2011-09-24T09:36:00.000+01:00

You have to remember to look hard in the increasingly scanty trap these days. Otherwise I would have missed these two micros, each the size of the average length of lead which shows on a well-sharpened pencil.

I know that the first one has previously been identified for me by helpful experts and the second one may have been too. I shall spend what spare time I have this weekend checking back, or on the usually fruitful distraction of typing 'micro moth' into Google. Check out the latter's Sesame Street logo today (Sat, 24 Sept, btw).

I've said before that micros are a retirement project. I just hope that my eyesight or spectaclemakers' expertise makes that possible. My mother-in-law (92) is a member of the Worshipful Company of Spectaclemakers so I shall ask her.

Punctuated wings

2011-09-22T07:26:00.004+01:00

The Comma has a striking silhouette, easily the most raggedy of the UK's butterflies. This one obligingly posed in a way which strikingly shows its comma too. The dark backdrop to the underwing shows that it is one of the second brood which goes into hibernation fairly soon, although mild weather can wake them up to flutter about during the winter.

I think it must have hitched a lift into the Guardian's Leeds office (aka my shed) because I'd only just sat down when it appeared, fluttering so wildly at the window that I thought it must be a moth. Bit early to hibernate, I told it, capturing it neatly in my hand and bunging it out into the sunshine where it soared away.

The Comma is another butterfly success story which casts doubt on the regular prophesies of doom for the UK's limited number of species in the media. Its numbers dwindled in the early 20th century but it staged a sturdy comeback and is almost always around in our garden from the late spring to mid-autumn, provided the sun shines. Not for the first time, I recommend reading an excellent article about the Comma and a Victorian vicar's wife, Emma Hutchinson, in the newsletter of the West Midlands branch of the Butterfly Conservation Society. The magazine is called The Comma in her and the butterfly's honour.

Two for joy

2011-09-21T07:40:00.003+01:00

Two magpies beat me to the trap this morning but unlike a sparrow two years ago, they were far too big to get in. They wouldn't have found much if they had, but there was a Silver Y, a full-size one unlike the mini variety gammina which intrigued me the other day.

In their helpful comments on that post, Nick and Stewart said that 2011 was proving a poor year for Silver Ys, which used to be the common moth when I was young, largely because it flies by day as well as night. So here's another picture to cheer everyone up.

Alongside this in the trap were five large yellow underwings in varying stages of dilapidation, a daddy-longlegs and this, below. Is it a caddis fly? Almost instant update: I've just Googled - including some slightly gruesome pics of fishing fly bait - and I'm sure it is.

Hang on in there

2011-09-20T07:48:00.000+01:00

Gloomy mornings, always a bit of overnight drizzle, too many wasps... I can see the end of the season approaching. Not yet, though. The main inhabitants of the trap this morning were assorted yellow underwings and half-a-dozen Copper Underwings, all looking much the worse for wear, but there was also a refreshing gleam of orange and yellow.

The orange came from this Frosted Orange, another moth which my guide describes as liking 'disturbed weedy places' and which is therefore at home chez nous. It's balding like Prince Charles but the wing pattern is still a joy to behold. Time has also taken its toll on the mops of these two Sallows (I am pretty sure that's what they are), but they remain lovely as well. The second one is perching on the trap cable which, as Penny observes over our morning tea, helpfully gives scale.

Dragon's pond

2011-09-18T08:09:00.000+01:00

I had an interesting expedition to Wharncliffe Heath nature reserve in the steel-making valley of Stocksbridge the other day. I got thoroughly lost which is always an interesting experience in our crowded little island. Because of the crowding, it never bothers me as you're bound to find a house, road or slightly suspicious local soon enough; and in the end I got the complicated landscape sorted, saw a stoat, possibly one of its victims (gruesomely non-Beatrix Potter photo left), millions of Speckled Wood butterflies and a fine dragonfly pond.

The dragonflies were extremely restless and a big reddish one with notably clicking wings, which particularly interested me, kept far beyond the reach of my camera. By dint of just pointing and shooting from my sunlit perch on the old dam, I managed to get this blurry Southern Hawker in flight, though, plus the red damselfly (I think) right, which did have the courtesy to stop.

The stoat was far too clever for me, so here's a Speckled Wood instead.

Martin's mushrooms

2011-09-17T08:33:00.002+01:00

Actually they're toadstools, or at least I think they are. We're heading rapidly for Keats' season of mists, mellow fruitfulness - and fungi. There are lots of trees round us and up the toadstools pop at this time of year; incredible that such large objects grow at such speed.

Specially compared with lichen. Penny and I are devoted members of Leeds Phil & Lit and we're always attending lectures on everything you can imagine. This week it was Prof Mark Seaward from Bradford who has spent much of his life examining them. The talks are almost always very cheery, accessible and accompanied by props and this was no exception. Mark brought along a wondrous range of health, beauty and other products in which bits of lichen play a supposedly magical but probably spurious part.

This is a shame because lichen grows at such a snail's pace, and although there seem to be carpets of it everywhere, mankind can alter that double quick. Anyway, here are three fungi which I will spend the weekend leisurely trying to identify in my toadstool Bible, which I love because of the thrilling skull and crossbones symbols by the ones - only a handful in the UK luckily - that can kill you.

Moth to the flame

2011-09-16T07:37:00.003+01:00

I met a very nice man the other day, Joe Kent, who once had an even nicer job title: Head of the North. This was for Homeless Link, the excellent charity tackling rough sleeping. Joe still works for them but internal changes mean that he now has a wider a brief but a less romantic title. We met at a talk I gave in Knaresborough about my book True North (a fine Christmas present, even for moth enthusiasts...) and I have added 'Head of the North' to my anecdotage. Every company should have one.

Anyway, we chatted about moths too, inevitably, and Joe has sent me the following fascinating email, an episode I'd not registered though I'm pretty sure I've read The Return of the Native, long ago and probably compulsorily. Here's Joe:

When you mentioned your Moth blog I made an automatic link in my head to a Thomas Hardy novel and now I have finally remembered why! Here is one section of the novel (book four chapter four), there may be others sections that mention moths, too, and the heath is a fundamental part of the novel:

"The heath tonight appeared to be totally deserted; and Wildeve, after looking over Eustacia's garden gate for some little time, with a cigar in his mouth, was tempted by the fascination that emotional smuggling had for his nature to advance towards the window, which was not quite closed, the blind being only partly drawn down. He could see into the room, and Eustacia was sitting there alone. Wildeve contemplated her for a minute, and then retreating into the heath beat the ferns lightly, whereupon moths flew out alarmed. Securing one, he returned to the window, and holding the moth to the chink, opened his hand. The moth made towards the candle upon Eustacia's table, hovered round it two or three times, and flew into the flame.
Eustacia started up. This had been a well-known signal in old times when Wildeve had used to come secretly wooing to Mistover. She at once knew that Wildeve was outside, but before she could consider what to do her husband came in from upstairs. Eustacia's face burnt crimson at the unexpected collision of incidents, and filled it with an animation that it too frequently lacked."

It must have made an impression on me to remember as I haven't read this book for over 25 years!

It certainly makes an impression me. Gloomy old Hardy, what an image... Mind you, the biography of him by Claire Tomalin is absolutely excellent.

Now, we'd better have a moth. This one flew into our kitchen last night, although not into the candle which we romantically light to have with our supper. I am still working on what it is (the colouring is highly misleading) but do you think it was a signal from some equivalent of Wildeve outside?

Update: my best guess so far is Angle-striped Sallow, although they are not so common. All help appreciated.

Obeying the laws of fashion

2011-09-15T07:29:00.000+01:00

Blue and green should never be seen
Unless there's something in between

I first heard that fashion rule when HM The Queen visited Bath when I was a young reporter there and she excited much comment by her defiance of it.

The Red-green Carpet is more obedient, or conventional. It's a moth which appears all over the country at this time of year, except perhaps for the Orkney islands where only one has ever been seen.

As you can see, it's really the Brown-green Carpet and thus has lessons for camouflage, although perhaps ones which the experts have known for a long time. I remember painting my Airfix kits of a Spitfire and a Lancaster bomber in almost exactly this patterning. Here's the wing closer-up, although I've not yet mastered focus at this level so it looks more like a blurry reconnaissance film from one of the above aircraft.

One feature of the Red-green Carpet is a patch of flaky white at the tip of each forewing, as if the moth has had a brush with chalk or a board-rubber. Here's that close-up as well.

Small but silver

2011-09-14T07:56:00.001+01:00

More unsettled weather, though the winds have died down. So only a few moths, and most of them predictable. This one interested me, however: it's only a Silver Y (I'm 90 percent sure, although I get muddled by the rather similar Golden Y and Beautiful Golden Y), but it seemed unusually small.

Since you may not be familiar with the size of a Sainsbury's 'Taste the Difference' eggbox, and since the moth was peacefully sleeping, I took it inside and lined it up with Penny's old printer's ruler, from her days as chief sub-editor of Cosmopolitan. I could give you the measurement in points, but here it is in millimetres: 15.

This suggests a Silver Y, whose forewing length is 13-21mm according to Waring, Townend and Lewington whereas the other two start at 17mm. Aren't I getting scientifc in my old age? Note, though, the different effects of light (a) outside and (b) in our kitchen. It reminds me of a mirror I once had in a hotel in San Francisco which showed how you looked in daylight, bright office light and subdued restaurant light. As I recall, the last was the most forgiving. Update: see very helpful comments which suggests that this is indeed a Silver Y, a small version due to starvation as a caterpillar known as 'gammina'.

Hurricane flyers

2011-09-13T07:44:00.000+01:00

Might Hurricane Katia sweep in some rarities from America's vast stock of moths, like the Arctic Skuas and Manx Shearwaters which have been limping in to Slimbridge on the storm? No such luck, but hats off to this little Garden Carpet which was out and about in winds topping 50mph and probably higher. Plus a bit of rain; and I must say that the rain-shield on my trap, a simple plastic disc designed by the 1950s entomologists Mr and Mrs Robinson, is one of the most effective devices I have ever come across.

I've included our fancy secateurs for scale, and colour, because the Carpet is a chit of a thing. Slightly bigger, and bearing the scars of either the storm or a long life, there was also this Rosy Rustic in the eggboxes. According to my moth Bible, it frequents 'gardens and disturbed weedy places'. Chez nous, it isn't always easy to tell the difference.

A score of equally battered Large Yellow Underwings completed the hurricane haul, along with half-a-dozen wasps, one daddy-longlegs and nobbut a few of those flies which infested yesterday's post.

Flies and fleas

2011-09-12T07:52:00.000+01:00

Hurricane Katia is supposed to be flicking her tail at the UK, but to little effect in Leeds so far. It's blowy and damp but the trap's main menace this morning was gentlemen and ladies like the one on the left, with this Dark Arches.

If I had a pound for each one etcetera... I think they must have been what was annoying this handsome Lesser Swallow Prominent which was beating its wing wildly under the transparent plastic cowl but settled down quietly on the rim of the bulb-holder as soon as I released it. It's reassuring that a bout of such violent behaviour has had little effect on the beauty of its wings and not dislodged too many of the scales responsible for that.

I don't know what the flies are and would be interested if any reader does. Ditto with this strange beast on the left, with its Newcastle United legs and disdainful lack of interest in the fly and daddy longlegs behind it.

A rival trap - plus some French animals which are not moths

2011-09-11T09:28:00.000+01:00

We got home very late last night and for once had left our porch light on, so didn't have to fumble with the keys. Better still, the light acted as a moth trap on a warm evening and brought me a new species; this Grey Chi, with its pretty patterning and distinctive black mark reminiscent of the Greek letter Chi, helpfully shown right. It's basically our X and pronounced 'Kai' as in the Christian symbol, the Kai-Ro. The moth was rather high up, so sorry about the focus.

This was just as well, because the moth trap this morning was so infested with wasps that I beat a retreat, and left its contents - yellow underwings mostly, so far as I could see - to sort themselves out undisturbed. I may go down later and have a braver look.

Maintenant, le dernier bulletin de la France. Can you spot the first of my non-moth French wildlife, below?

Here he (or she) is in full. There were plenty of lightning-speed lizards, including a regular visitor which had lost its tail, that remarkable means they have of escaping predators.

A Southern Hawker dragonfly also skimmed about, just like the ones we have at home:

Then there was this brilliant beetle, a mobile, strawberry-flavoured Everton mint:

Plus this curious armoured bug, exploring my ageing skin:

And finally a juvenile Western Whip Snake which had taken refuge in the beautiful old Romanesque church at Segonzac. They're not venomous but Penny and I didn't know that at the time; hence the photos taken from a respectful distance.

Here's its scary-looking head. And with that, a bientot la France et merci pour les vacances fantastiques.

A la recherche de moths perdu (Vol VII)

2011-09-10T09:42:00.001+01:00

Drizzle and a plague of wasps affect the trap, which anyway has little of joy other than some fine Copper Underwings. But who cares, because I have a little more French material to keep me typing happily away.

This Small Copper is actually my last holiday butterfly, but I saw it in an interesting place: a museum of gourds at the hamlet of L'epalourdie near Bussac, a few miles from Perigueux, which we visited on our last day,in that slightly desperate way you do when you've got a few hours before the 'plane home. Le Jardin de Calebasse et Cie is run by an excellently enthusiastic artisan cougourdonnier who told us about Haiti's gourde currency and the way that calabashes were used as armbands when sea-swimming was first introduced at Biarritz.

He also showed us this calabash which flowers at night - and is therefore pollinated by...MOTHS! You can read his explanation board below, because in my excitement I took a picture of it. I was very pleased to discover this fact and will hope to find out more; I think that moths and other 'insectes nocturnes' as the cougourdonnier calls them, play a part in pollinating Nicotiana, Tobacco plants, which are so sweetly-scented at dusk. But I am not yet sure of my facts.

Throw of the dice

2011-09-09T08:21:00.000+01:00

Look, it's a Leeds moth! A Green Carpet. Last night I lit the trap for the first time since 19 August, thanks to holidays, a family wedding and - since we settled back - wind and rain. Here's another one; a Black Rustic. We're back to the good old dour and pastel English shades...

But I'm not done with France, and today features the solitary member I found in the Dordogne of that noble family, the Fritillaries. I have a personal history with these going back to 12, when I caught my rarest butterfly, the Charlotta version of the Dark Green Fritillary, at exactly the spot above Kynance Cove in Cornwall where Prof E B Ford chased and caught one of the few Monarch butterflies seen in the UK. You can read more, if so inclined, on an ancient blogpost; and here is the actual butterfly with its beautiful silver underwing lozenges, below a standard DGF.

This is by way of introduction to my French Fritillary, the Knapweed, which lived in my clover-field hunting ground. It's as lovely as all its kind, with plenty of the glowing (and dark) spots which led to its name, from the Latin Fritillus, for dice box. It shares this, for the same reason, with the plant family which includes the beautiful Snakeshead Fritillary, now gradually colonising our garden.

The Knapweed isn't found in the UK but is very like the Glanville Fritillary, a rarity named after Eleanor Glanville, whose knowledgable hunting for butterflies in the late 17th and early 18th century led her son to dispute her will on the grounds that she was mad. Unfortunately, he won. Sorry the pic of the Knapweed's topwings is a bit blurred; I was over-excited, I think. Here's the underwing, with slightly better focus.

Singing the blues

2011-09-08T07:45:00.001+01:00

It sounds sad, but some of my happiest moments on holiday were spent poised over small butterflies as they sipped nectar in the French sun, all with their wings tightly closed. I was willing them to open, because these were the Blues, jewel-like butterflies which give vivid snatches of my favourite colour in flight, as above, but very seldom show any at rest, as below.

I marvel at the number of photographs in existence which show Blues displaying their top wings, and at the patience which must have been involved. So why was I happy? Because (a) it was blissfully warm and (b) I was sure that eventually one of the pesky insects would succumb.

Hooray! A few did. The beautiful trio above are only Common Blues (I am fairly sure; regulars will be familiar with my blunders), but aren't they lovely? And here's the female, below; not as fabulously-coloured but a beautiful, dainty butterfly especially when recently-hatched and still with its delicate white Laura Ashley petticoat rim.

There are enormous numbers of Blues on the continent, many differing only slightly, not only in their patterning but in their names: eg we have Oberthur's, Agenjo's, Rippart's, Higgins' and Gallo's Anomalous Blues, all named after experts who presumably spotted their (tiny) anomalies from the norm. There's even a Martin's Blue, I'm delighted to say, which lives in North Africa on stony slopes and may be flitting around Colonel Gadaffi even now.

The others I saw included the Silver-studded Blue, named after the small dabs of sparkle on its lower wings' outer rim of spots like teenagers' eye makeup, as in the picture above (double-click on it to see more closely). This butterfly has an interesting relationship with ants which conduct its caterpillars into their nests to pupate. 'Without ants,' says my Butterfly Bible, 'larvae become very agitated and usually die.'

And lastly, on the way to Bergerac airport, I saw this female tailed Blue, obligingly showing not only the colour of her forewings but her neat little tails. I assumed that she was a Long-tailed Blue but her underwing - right - suggests that she's actually an interesting butterfly called the Geranium Bronze, a 'Blue' accidentally introduced to the Balearics in 1990 in a consignment of pelargoniums from South Africa. It rapidly spread to Spain, has been recorded in Rome and Brussels, and now seems to be settling in France. Patience is usually vindicated. And that's the end of my holiday Blues.

High time we saw a moth

2011-09-07T07:49:00.003+01:00

The butterfly invasion of this blog isn't over yet, but today is dedicated to my French holiday moths. Without a light trap, there were few of these, but the tally isn't that bad, considering. The Penny Trap, for example, which consisted of Mrs W cooking in a brightly-lit kitchen with the shutters open and wearing her very fine butterfly T-shirt, attracted this Small Elephant Hawk, a species I last saw in Leeds when I was 12 and John Armitage, the marvellous natural history curator at the City Museum, directed me to its caterpillars on willow herb growing along the ring road embankments in the Meanwood valley.

Penny also found this small white creature on the loo floor; but otherwise the haul is drawn from day-flying moths enjoying the clover-type crop which our neighbour M.Bortolin grew for his goats, as previously described. I've already shown you the star, the Crimson Speckled, but here are two more which are satisfactorily rare in the UK: the Pale Shoulder and the Marbled Clover, the latter well-named.

I didn't see any Burnet moths, but here's their faithful chum the Burnet Companion which was the most common moth in the field. Also a delicate Latticed Heath, which I remember mistaking over-excitedly for a Duke of Burgundy Fritillary at around the time of the Meanwood caterpillar forays. And thirdly, a shy Straw Belle, given away by its excellent, feathery antennae.

A mystery moth penultimately - even Charlie Fletcher, our omniscient county moth recorder who identified the Marbled Clover for me, isn't sure about this, or the white loo one. Any random French moth expert passing by would do me a kindly service by solving the riddle. Meanwhile I will Google patiently away. Update: Aha! Thanks to Richard in Comments, I now know that this is a micro, also found in the UK, called Pyrausta despicata. You can read more about it here. Many thanks, R.

And finally, a characteristically blurred picture of that whirring little non-stop flyer, the Hummingbird Hawk, in a garden in Bergerac. This isn't the worst photo of my holiday moths, mind. That honour goes to my non-existent picture of a lovely Jersey Tiger which I focussed-in on in our porch, but just as I pressed the camera button, it took off.

No guillotines here

2011-09-06T07:32:00.001+01:00

I think we all know what happened to the aristocrats in the French Revolution. But those of the butterfly world were apparently spared. One of the joys of crossing the Channel is that you are very soon seeing Swallowtails, both our exceedingly rare British one, Papilio machaon, and the continental Scarce Swallowtail which is striped like a zebra.

You get a bit blase, to be honest. I didn't initially stir when machaons swooped round the cottage's pool, but Penny went speedily into action when a Scarce Swallowtail crash-landed in the water. Alas, it couldn't be saved and here are its sad remains, right, contrasted with the machaon fluttering on a buddleia above.

I was really excited, though, to find this Purple Emperor, in the middle of lunch at a cafe in the exceptionally pretty village of St Jean de Cole. I have often admired the Emperor's purple sheen in collections but never seen one alive and never expected to. In the UK at least it is notorious for keeping to the top of trees.

It can be tempted down with over-ripe fruit, however and although that didn't feature in our delicious lunch, French emperors may have more refined tastes than their British counterparts. Certainly this one spent a lot of time in the cafe's neat little herb and vegetable garden. It reminded me of the French translation of Peter Rabbit which adds toute sorts de legumes to Beatrix Potter's original text, along with the comment: C'est un peu dur, les radis, may si appetissant.

Familiar friends - plus a new one

2011-09-05T07:55:00.001+01:00

As with the white and yellow butterflies, so with the browns. Our cottage in France was in the heart of the countryside and we were surrounded by Meadow Browns (the two top pictures), the occasional Wall butterfly basking in the sun (small pic on left) and Small Heaths tripping across the roughly-mown lawn (next two pics below). Sorry my instructions re pics are rather confusing but I'm trying to cram as many in as possible as a record of the butterflies I found.

Whether these are continental versions of our familiar friends, I am not sure, but they look exactly the same to my (somewhat untrustworthy) eye, although I briefly thought that I'd found an unusual variety in this one, below. In fact the pronounced ribbing is the effect of low sunlight. It illustrates well how the wings of a butterfly resemble the sail of a yacht when stiffened by wooden battens or strakes.

(Either that, or it's some sort of Ringlet. I'm hoping an expert on European butterflies may chance across these French bulletins and put me right when wrong, as my moth buddies do).

There was one novelty, though, which initially I took to be a White Admiral because of the white barring of its topwings - which alas, it hardly ever shows when at rest. The best effort I can make at showing them is below but it was taken at long range and is characteristically blurred. There are actually two butterflies in the pic, an amorous pair which I felt it would have been unfair to pursue too closely. And there were a lot of brambles.

I think that this mystery insect is a Woodland Grayling; certainly it liked shade and one of the several which lived around the cottage was always to be found under a clump of trees where the owner kept his pile of chopped wood. Like the UK Grayling, it is expert at camouflaging itself when at rest; not only by folding its wings tightly and slipping the forewing down as far as possible, but by turning to cast the smallest possible shadow when it was caught in the sunlight. Normally it tried to settle in shade.

Finally, in this notably picture-infested post, here's that Wall butterfly again, taking off. Blurring rules, OK.

Blancs et jaunes

2011-09-04T08:13:00.000+01:00

Here's the French Connection, part 2: whites and yellows. I've been puzzling over how to divide my holiday hoard and apart from the simple division between butterflies and moths, the easel method seems the best way.

The whites and yellows don't usually furnish much excitement, with even Clouded and Pale Clouded Yellows pretty predictable once you cross the Channel, albeit very nice to see for a Yorkshireman whose native county doesn't get them that often. Sorry the Clouded Yellows in the big photo above are a bit blurred, but one was just taking off after an amorous encounter with the other. Here's the PC:

No surprise also to find Small and Large (left pic) Whites, which go everywhere, like the looks of Robert Browning's My Last Duchess (I only know that because my younger son learned it at school and recites it with brilliant malevolence).

But here's the treat: a Wood White whose flight is as dainty as any among the butterfly world. It's a delicate creature altogether, with unusually shaped wings - narrower and more tightly-curved than the usual, broad spread of butterflies its size. There are various continental versions but my butterfly Bible Tolman & Lewington doesn't show any of them reaching as far as the Dordogne. Mind you, that also applies, just, to the Cleopatra, a lovely version of the Brimstone with bright orange blotches on the sulphur-coloured wings; and I definitely saw one of those near the excellent castle of Beynac. But we were driving so I can't prove it with a photograph here. So here's another Wood White, a male I think because of the more pronounced sooty tip to the wing:

Little pretty

2011-09-01T07:40:00.000+01:00

Righto, here we go on my holiday treasures. I've been trailing the fact that most are butterflies, but let's start with a moth. It's a real bobbydazzler and one which I never expected to live to see.

Welcome to the Crimson Speckled, which has the status of rare immigrant in the UK and has only been seen here about 100 times since 1900, with two anni mirabili in 1961 and 1990 when over 30 and 25 were recorded respectively.

Mine caught my eye in the big, unhedged field of a sort of clover which lay on the slope below our rented French cottage and which was my happy hunting ground for butterflies and a handful of day-flying moths, including this one. Every day, our neighbouring farmer Armand Bortolin harvested a strip to feed his goats which make prize-winning cheese, but there was enough to keep me occupied during our week's stay. Isn't French weather nice, btw?

The Crimson Speckled's botanical name is Utatheisa pulchella, the second name meaning 'pretty little one'. I cannot rest fully content, however, until I encounter the Beautiful Utatheisa, an even rarer relative with pink hindwings and orange blotches on its forewings. This is highly unlikely. Only one has ever been seen in the UK, on Skokholm island off Pembrokeshire in 1948. The experts think it got there somewhow from its native North America where the species is well known, feeds on a plant with the excellent name of Rattlebox and has been the subject of some fascinating research - see here. But let's have another peep at pulchella, looking rather as I imagine Caiaphas the high priest did at his ministrations in the Temple...

Holiday peep

2011-08-31T07:33:00.003+01:00

A few posts ago, I mentioned my son Olly's kind despatch of special butterfly stamps from his holiday in Spain. Now here are two more, on a card waiting for Penny and me when we got back last night from our own holiday, near Bergerac in France. The handsome one on the left is a British butterfly too - the High Brown Fritillary. There's narry a hope of finding one of those in Leeds, But I still remember gasping with excitement when I first saw one as a small schoolboy on the brackeny skirts of the British Camp on the Malvern Hills.

It wasn't such good news for the fritillary because in those days I had a net. In France. it's all been camerawork, and there was plenty to photograph (quite apart from scenes of chateaux, les plus belles villages de France and les plus belles diners et dejeuners de nos vies). Here are a couple of tempters, above and below. It's going to be a bit of a butterfly week on the blog, because who can resist those colours? But there will be some good moths as well - and one or two other, mostly creeping, things...

Admirals ahoy!

2011-08-19T09:26:00.006+01:00

More good news, after the re-appearance of a Southern Hawker here: the Red Admirals have arrived in force at last. It's only a few days since I was worrying that this year's unusual weather might have done something nasty to their life cycle; but we had four swooping over the buddleia in the sunshine, with as many Peacocks and a fluttery couple of Large Whites vying for the honey-scented swags of purple flowers.

The Red Admiral is the earliest butterfly I can remember, because my mother was very fond of it - I think, again, because it was the first to which she was introduced as a child. The Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell are lovely too, and I am now sure that we will see all three regularly between now and the onset of autumn. I'm not so sure that I can pick between them, but we are lucky to have such colourful common wild creatures on an island whose fauna and flora tends to the sober-looking side. Like the pleasant but pastel Large White.

Red Admirals - a distortion of 'admirable' which has nothing to do with the sea - sip nectar voraciously. They were really going at the florets yesterday, plunging in their long probosces and so intent on the process that I could creep quite close. I even took a film; and although I'm not (yet) a master of close focus in movie-making, it gives the idea. I'm hoping to add it but I've just spent ages trying to upload it without success and must go now. Maybe another attempt later...

Yay! I think it's worked...

Yes it has. It isn't terribly action-packed, but I'm excited.

Slimes of the times

2011-08-18T07:34:00.003+01:00

Spare a thought this morning for all those young people opening their A level results. I can't come up with any original insights on the subject, but I do feel for them and their Mums and Dads. Good luck to them all and perseverance to those who are disappointed. Many great or happy people have overcome such stumbles.

Now to a blog first... Pictures of slime. Actually that's maybe a crude word for fungus, but we initially went 'Yuck' when we saw a splash of yellow gunge while out on a walk the other week with our nice Australian visitors Helen Versey and David Brown. Overcoming this to take a closer look, we all reckoned the stuff was a fungus and David's close-up photo (he's very good at these; veteran readers may remember last year's one he took of a grub in one of our home-grown peas) bears this out. Here it is:

It's lovely in its way. David emails with it: You may recall that we came upon something slimy on Otley Chevin. In the fading light we couldn't tell if it was dropped or propagated. It's now Saturday and after a frantic week at work I have time to go through my photos of the trip. For a while I thought a child had wandered into the forest after a consuming a large quantity of confectionery. However, close observation will reveal that it's a fungus hard at work on a dead tree. You can see the fibres and the floral heads clearly.

Indeed you can.

Meanwhile, on our Harrogate walk at the weekend, Penny and I found something similar. Our photography is nothing like as expert, but here are a couple of pics, above and below. If anyone knows the identity of these strange forms of 'life', I'd be interested to learn more. Meanwhile I will Google away, as ever. I should add that it isn't cauliflower cheese.

And Hooray! Phil Gates comes to the rescue - see Comments, and even more, see his wonderful blog and its post on this very slime. Thanks again Phil.

Update on 19 August: Woo! Even more expertise. See further comment from Katie.

Up from the grave?

2011-08-17T07:29:00.001+01:00

"She is not dead. but sleepeth." That was the case with Jairus' daughter. I can't say for sure whether it also applied to our ditched Southern Hawker (see yesterday's post), but we certainly have one back. It was zipping around yesterday afternoon in the sunshine, in that purposeful way that dragonflies have. Then it settled on some wild strawberries and munched the remains of fly whose wing can be seen on its head.

Carnivorous indeed. Its jaws were working away so busily, above the little basket formed by its legs in which it holds its prey, that it took no notice of my ever-closer camera. Penny had reverently laid what we thought was the corpse of the one in the pond on a nearby stone, and it isn't there any more. Has it revived, or is this one a pal?

2011-08-16T07:37:00.002+01:00

Icarus flew too near the sun. Alas, one of our Southern Hawker dragonflies has flown too near the water. I found it, crashlanded in our pond, presumably unable to take off again because its wings were soggy or caught by lying flat on the surface tension.

Here it is; a rather extraordinary image head-on - the last view in life, I guess, for anything on which Southern Hawkers predate. Actually, I haven't had time to check on dragonfly diet and won't for a while; but will update when I have done. (And here I am, much earlier than I expected - after all, it's only a couple of Google clicks. They are skilled hunters of other insects including...aaagh...moths. Interestingly, their aquatic nymphs sometimes venture out of the water in search of prey. Sad that water should end this one's remarkable, partly-amphibious career).

Some people kindly drop into this blog from overseas. If any such are reading, you might be interested in this non-mothy picture taken on a weekend walk which Penny and I took along a section of the path which circles Harrogate. It's marvellous that a seaside set of binoculars can be provided without fear of vandalism, even down to the set of wooden stands which passers-by can arrange to suit their children's height.

Ever the bold experimenter, I took this picture through the lens, like a spy. It shows the atmospheric ruined church on How Hill above Fountain's Abbey, another lovely spot. I include these because the street troubles may have given rather a lurid view of life in the UK. Fear not, all is mostly well and we have a long history of such outbreaks when parts of society blow their pressure valve. Beneficial change usually follows once everyone has calmed down which, touch wood, they now have.

Butterfly ponderings

2011-08-15T07:51:00.000+01:00

Continuing the Spanish theme, I'm unexpectedly collecting the current series of Spanish butterfly stamps, thanks to my younger son who's been holidaying there with a friend. These two have arrived so far and he promises another three to come. Hooray for England's youth!

Butterflies are a popular choice for stamps but, as always, moths follow somewhat in their wake. Not in Spain, though. Maybe inspired by personal experiences such as J-P Stacey's (see two posts below), the postal authorities there did a great moth series last year and they featured a spectacular Moon Moth and its foodplant the geranium in 2009.

Actually, I've been thinking about butterflies more than moths myself, after a sunny day which brought out plenty of them including this Small Copper perching close to an early windfall which looks like a demented smiley ball. The butterfly was one of a dozen or more frisking about and taking an encouraging interest in one another. We should have plenty more next year.

There were also plenty of Speckled Woods, Gatekeepers, Meadow Browns and Holly Blues, plus the occasional Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell. I wonder, however, if others are experiencing a shortage of the usual, beautifully-coloured Vanessids this year. Our buddleias are at their best now, but I have seen only one Red Admiral and the others are sparse compared with recent years. The weather has been a bit odd which may have affected their cycle. But there are plenty of nettles about - their food plant - so perhaps it's just a matter of being patient.

No it was a mariposa nocturna LEOPARDO...

2011-08-14T09:24:00.003+01:00

Sorry, or disculparse as i believe they say in Spain. As Nick Tanner kindly pointed out yesterday in the Comments, my exciting featured foreign moth was a Leopard, not a Puss. It's another fine species that I've yet to see, although it's found in Yorkshire according to my faithful trinity of advisers, Messrs Waring, Townsend and Lewington.

It also has an excellent caterpillar; not as extraordinary as the Puss Moth's, but one of the best of the 'wooly bears'. Here's a picture, courtesy of Dave's Garden. Btw my moth Bible makes me feel slightly better about yet another identification bungle, because in its invaluable 'Similar Species' category, it brackets the Leopard with the Puss. On the other hand, I have admit that it doesn't take a genius to tell them apart.

Here's the adult Puss Moth, just to show you the difference with yesterday's Leopard. Thanks to Wikipedia. I wonder if battleship 'dazzle' camouflage artists used it as a reference. Or Bridget Riley, the op/pop-artist. In all three cases, the swirls and zigzags of black and white have a disorientating effect on the human eye. I'd guess the same goes for Puss Moth-hunting birds.

It will probably play havoc with my attempts at blog design, but here are a couple of examples of dazzle and Riley - the Aircraft-carrier HMS Argus in 1918 and Riley in front of one of her works in the swinging Sixties (ahhh...I remember them well).

Anyway, I lit the trap again last night for the first time in over a week, and was rewarded by this fine pair of visitors. Both pose legitimate identification problems as the Gold Spot, which I think this is, is so similar to the Lempke's Gold Spot that W,T & L use the dread phrase 'genitalia should be examined for confirmation.' The Swallow and Lesser Swallow Prominents are also evilly alike. I think this one is a Lesser.

Lempke's Gold Spot? Barend J Lempke is or was a Dutch entomolgist of some distinction. I suspect 'was' as most of his identifications seem to have been in the 1950s. More when my mastery of Google and Dutch improve. Het splijt mij, as they say in Holland.

Mariposa nocturna gato?

2011-08-13T09:09:00.004+01:00

Riots and rain have rather disrupted moth activities this last week, so many thanks to J-P Stacey for sending this very fine picture and account of a Puss Moth which visited his parents' balcony in Spain. I've always wanted to see a Puss Moth and still more one of their caterpillars which are stars of the UK natural world. (Update: Eek! See Comments - and tomorrow's post; but read on anyway, cos it's interesting).

Quite apart from looking astonishing, even in the strange and wonderful company of moth caterpillars generally (which, interestingly, are much more colourful than butterflies' although the latter get their own back as adult insects), they have whips on their tail to deter predators such as ichneumon wasps. These have a nasty habit of laying eggs inside caterpillars which hatch and then eat their hosts alive. Swish, flick. You're not getting away with that on a Puss Moth larva.

Anyway, over to J-P and his wife Kate who sorted the pic together:

I thought you might like two (slightly blurry) photos of what I believe was a Spanish puss moth, taken on my parents' balcony in Spain (unsurprisingly). It was a little shorter than my little finger, maybe an inch and a half, and seemed to be wearing an ermine stole (more like a White Ermine, in fact, than the White Ermine itself.)

We were near Valencia, right by the coast. There's woodland nearby but not what you'd call forest: it can get quite dry and scrubby round there. It landed in the late afternoon and was quite groggy and sleepy; I picked it up on a piece of paper and put it into a damp pot plant where it would be hidden from any predators; by the morning it was gone, so I can only hope for the best.

Do feel free to share these photos and the story on your blog, if the quality of either is good enough!

It certainly is. Thanks very much again and to Kate. And here's a Puss Moth caterpillar to end with, courtesy of the Natural History Museum. I hope I come across one myself, one day.

Interesting fact about Birmingham

2011-08-10T20:18:00.000+01:00

A hasty welcome if you've come here via my shameless plug on Twitter as I wander central Birmingham on Trouble Patrol. All is well tonight and will stay that way, I hope. I also hope you'll visit Birmingham if you've not been lately, and also the Black Country to the west.

The city is very fine, with the nobility of Chamberlain Square and a lovely restored area of canals around Gas Street basin where President Clinton had a pint at All Bar One. Sitting here also reminds me of the fascinating work of Bunny Teagle in founding the familiar modern concept of urban wildlife trusts with his 1978 study of Black Country wildlife, The Endless Village. Thanks for info to the country's second most famous BBC - the Birmingham and Black Country wildlife people.

I have just Googled 'Birmingham Moth' and here is the first entry on Google Image. It is of Mr J.Moth, author of The City of Birmingham Baths Department 1851-1951 published in the latter year. Much further down is an actual moth, one of my favourites - the Merveille du Jour. Many thanks to Opal West Midlands - Wildlife on your patch. Here it is:

Comfortable (and uncomfortable) billets

2011-08-08T07:40:00.000+01:00

While on the subject of yellow underwings, here's one which knows a nice berth when it sees one. Penny had just finished getting our spare room ready for a cousin's stay, when it flew in and settled down. Here it is again, largely to show the amazing difference in colouring when you suppress flash.

The uncomfortable billet of this post's title is occupied by the world's hardiest Willow Herb, seen here clinging to the top of one of the extraordinary Norber Erratics above Austwick (lovely, lovely village and home of the truly excellent Game Cock pub). Rather deplorably, I have lived 61 years before visiting these geological wonders - enormous boulders left over from the glacial melt and perched on little plinths of underlying limestone which they have protected from the surrounding erosion (limestone being very soft, as W.H.Auden memorably described - goodness this post is full of links).

Here is an erratic, above, with my helpful hand (and boot) pointing at the plinth. The surrounding grassland is truly lovely, with wildflowers dotted about such as these harebells, this time with Penny's finger for scale. Down Crummackdale there are three fine clapper bridges, one of them just above an old sheepwash. Then a narrow, walled lane to the hamlet of Wharfe and back to the Game Cock for Sunday roast.

In an eggbox, far, far away

2011-08-07T10:21:00.000+01:00

Here goes Luke Skywalker into hyperspace...

Or is it merely a Common or Lesser Common Rustic questing into the heart of a Morrison's eggbox?

The latter I am afraid; it is a humdrum time for moths at the moment, dominated by these two pals: the Yellow Underwing (of many sorts) and the wasp. They seem to get along, being comparably whoozy from the mercury vapour lamp and a good night's sleep. This would be as stupefying as a good day's sleep for us, moths being nocturnal.

For all that the yellow underwings are as common as muck, their beauty should not be ignored. Look at this fine, sturdy Lesser Broad-bordered one (I think, but you know me). They also deserve doffed caps for their vigour in the UK, even if it is comparable to the similar success of, say, brambles. I got the latest edition of the totally fab magazine Atropos yesterday (a birthday present from my younger son), and its table of the country's commonest garden moths in 2010 is headed by the Large Yellow Underwing with the Lesser Broad-bordered in 9th place and the Lesser at 18th.

Plenty of other things are arriving as well. Here to end with is what I believe to be a Common Carpet. But as as I just said, you know me...

One down...

2011-08-05T07:38:00.001+01:00

Penny and I are big fans of the Guardian's Quick Crossword, but although it's reckoned a doddle by experts, it usually takes both of us to complete it. Guess who got Two Down yesterday..?

Actually, it was Penny. I then managed to fill in 'rooftop' for the clue across, which was about the lowest possible way to fly. I guess that also applies to moths. In my musings on the Peacock yesterday, I forgot to say that its careful navigation only went haywire when it got near to the room's central lights, which were on. As often mentioned on this blog before, the reason for insects' 'attraction' to light is still a puzzle, but from my (very amateur) observations, I'm sure it more of a disorientation than an attraction. The Peacock started jinking all over the place, before dropping well below the lights and the resuming its normal calm progress. Mind you, human attraction can have a similar effect, in my experience, so I guess the jury stays out.

It is the same with the moth trap. The next picture isn't very illuminating - ha! - but that spun sugar pattern just above the light is about a thousand small flies. Occasionally a larger speck of light, ie a moth, hurtles through them into the trap, or sometimes back off into the darkness. The movements are never smooth or deliberate but have all the look of an aeroplane out of control.

We'd better have a picture of a moth. Here are two. A Riband Wave and a Mother of Pearl micro trying to communicate on either side of the trap's plastic shield. There were about 150 other moths dozing in the eggboxes, overwhelmingly types of Yellow Underwing, Dark Arches and other worthy but unexciting souls.

Tooth, claw and sting

2011-08-04T07:32:00.000+01:00

This looks like a clip from Spartacus, and certainly the life of insects in our tranquil-looking garden is anything but peaceful. Something has gone amiss with the wasp in the foreground and its relative clearly sees it as one thing only. Food. The pair were oblivious to the possibility of a greater doom: mutually assured destruction from my large shoes. On this occasion, I forbore. After all, they had provided me with an interesting picture and experience.

It's a bad day, I'm afraid, for those who shudder at creepy-crawlies. We had some small cousins here, running riot, and they directed me to this prettily-patterned spider. Actually it was interesting that none of them had the slightest fear or worry about spiders. With luck, Charlie's Web has triumphed over Arachnophobia. Mind you, our Australian visitors had some interesting things to say about their spiders. Arachnophobia is a bit more understandable there.

Finally, this Peacock fluttered into the house from the warm weather outside and flew very daintily around. At one point, I crawled under a desk and between two boxes of stuff to try to get a picture. I was very impressed at how slowly and carefully the butterfly navigated around narrow spaces, like that episode in Star Wars where Luke Skywalker flies right into the Death Star, except at a fraction of the speed. I wonder if it recognises that great scientist Dorothy Hodgkin who spent much of her retirement at York university.

Down under

2011-08-03T12:36:00.000+01:00

We've had our Australian friends Helen Versey and David Brown staying, which always means a brief but massive improvement in the quality of pictures on this blog. Last year David photographed an interesting grub in one of our meagre harvest of peas; this year it's the mystery object above.

What can it be? If I knew how to make this type go upside down, I would do that to delay the answer. So shut your eyes to the next bit if you want a little longer to decide.

It's the tail end - and, I believe, mating apparatus or what Charlie Fletcher the West Yorkshire county moth recorder calls 'wedding tackle' - of a very fine dragonfly which visited our pond. I was out working, so didn't see it, but H and D said that it was very helpful and obliging, holding its pose long enough for a series of pics. Here's another, with a third at the foot of the post.

I've noticed this about dragonflies; they appear to patrol a particular patch, so there is no need to chase after them. It's the same with hare-coursing, where the beagles and their quarry tend to run round in a circle, as opposed to the mad dash across the countryside of foxhounds. As for the dragonfly, it looks to me like one of the Hawkers, but I haven't Google-nailed it yet.

Sign of high summer

2011-08-01T08:03:00.000+01:00

Alright, it's a common little butterfly, the Green-veined white in the picture above. But I'm celebrating the flower, the Buddleia or 'Butterfly bush' named after the largely mysterious Rev Adam Buddle. It is bursting into bloom all over Leeds and with it have come the grandees of the butterfly world, the gaudy relations of our modest moths.

Red Admirals seem to be the earliest, with a few Small Tortoiseshells about. I've yet to see a new generation Peacock, though we've had plenty of over-wintering oldies earlier in the year, so their children won't be long. Commas have also stayed with us faithfully since late Spring, and here's another one.

Rev Buddle would surely have been delighted with all this although he never saw a buddleia and died well before Linnaeus named the genus after him. It came from China, like this rhododendron which flowered for the first time, extending our 'rhodo season' from late April to early August. On that score, white rabbits!

Yay! It's the beetles...

2011-07-31T07:40:00.001+01:00

Beetlemania is easy to understand when you come across creatures like this. It's either a Crucifix Beetle or some sort of longhorn, I'm not sure which (yet...hope to have more time to Google later). Actually there were two in the trap and here they are, snug and trying to avoid my attentions in the long grass. Their armour-plating is fascinating. Update and big thanks to Phil Gates - see Comments...

The one I mostly photographed was extremely active once it knew that a superior intelligence was on its case. It scuttled about on the eggboxes, hardly ever stopping long enough for me to focus. I think that it was building up enough energy after a night's sleep to take wing, which it did after about three minutes, most impressively. I specially like its deely-bobber antennae, here in action below. They clearly advise it about obstacles ahead. Wouldn't it be great if they evolved to change colour, chameleon-style, like traffic lights.

Double cross

2011-07-30T08:54:00.000+01:00

I'm going to seem like a leg fetishist after yesterday, but I couldn't resist the almost-human pose of this Poplar Hawk which proved its longevity by coming to the trap again; another visit next week and it - or its relatives - will be into their fourth month.

I wonder if I'll ever find a moth resting one calf on the other thigh, a habit which Ian Fleming once described as the sure sign of a young English man. When I was a YEM, I occasionally practised doing this in France, but nobody ever came up to me and asked: 'Is the name Bond? James Bond?'

Things are quiet otherwise, or rather unspectacular. There was a nice Peppered moth in the trap this morning, a score of Large Yellow Underwings, half-a-dozen Dark Arches, three Shuttle-shaped Darts (left) and at least another 20 smaller bods. So even a quiet night shows, yet again, how much starts happening after the sun goes down.

Show a leg

2011-07-29T07:36:00.000+01:00

I often forget that moths' legs can be helpful in identification, for example in my muddle the other day over the Dingy and Buff Footmen. The Dingy has dainty little pins whereas the Buff has sturdy calves of the sort which (she says) first attracted Penny to me.

Moths' legs are interesting too. It must be exhilarating to have six for a start, and they come with all manner of spurs and hairs to assist perching (possibly) and mating (definitely). But they tend to remain hidden. Like the Victorians who allegedly went to the lengths of covering table legs in the most puritanical households, moths wrap their wings over their undercarriage. So this Spectacle is a saucy exception.

The second picture shows it from the side, with its distinctive quiff; one of the most regular of all my visitors. It was the very first moth I showed on this blog when I started light-trapping in June 2008. Here's a picture I took then, showing more clearly the reason for its name (and, if you look carefully, a Mona Lisa hint of a smile).

The land that time forgot

2011-07-28T07:15:00.000+01:00

It's nice to spend a day at somewhere timeless, among children doing exactly what we did 50 and more years ago. Much has changed in the world, mostly for the better, but the middle stepping stones at Bolton Abbey still present a challenge to anyone aged under ten, and many much older than that.

There are still plenty of grasshoppers, too, in the Valley of Desolation where we had a picnic above one of the waterfalls which drop like something out of a tourist brochure for South America into clear and swimmable pools. Here's one, unusually tightly-focussed for me. I have no idea what kind it is but perhaps there is a Caeliferist out there who does?

Beauty in the everyday

2011-07-27T08:39:00.000+01:00

Nothing unusual came to the trap on a warm night. We're into the season of Yellow Underwings and allied brown pals which account for most people's lack of interest in moths. But let's enjoy the exquisite pattern of this Marbled Beauty - and also the rather fascinating dimpling of the lamp collar. It looks as if Mousey Thompson had decided to extend his style of furniture-making - lots of 'pockmarks' in the wood - to silver or aluminium.

And here are two examples of a 'small brown moth' which actually turns out on closer inspection to have a complicated and attractive pattern (double-click on the pics to make them bigger). It's the Shuttle-shaped Dart, the darker female above and the male below. The name has a resonance round here, where flying shuttles are an important part of our history.

Herald of Summer

2011-07-26T07:50:00.000+01:00

Exactly four months ago, I featured this lovely moth under the headline Herald of Spring. Now here it is back again, announcing the imminent August holidays. By chance, I decanted it from its eggbox on to a red towel and then it took off and landed on a geranium. Hence the gaudy backdrops.

The Herald is one of the great stayers among UK moths. Hatching in July, it flies until the cold weather comes in late autumn and then tucks up and hibernates for the winter. Back in March, I chattered about this practice, and two days later found a specimen snoozing in our garden shed. Springtime sees it on the wing again and then the cycles starts anew. It couldn't happen to a nicer moth.

As for this tiny creature, I can proudly announce that it is Blastobasis lacticolella, a foreign micro moth which has established itself here. Not to everyone's joy because if it gets into your larder, it will nibble away. You can see from the eggbox print how small it is. I almost missed it. My unusual confidence in its identity comes from the fact that Charlie Fletcher, our county moth recorder, kindly nailed it for me while also sorting out the Garden Pebble moth.

Another ID puzzle, quel surprise

2011-07-25T08:09:00.001+01:00

I think we have a couple of investigative Dun-bars here, each choosing a different eggbox cone in which to probe. My confidence in identification is much-battered, so I am being tentative. And, as always, I will correct all errors as prominently as the most powerful Press Complaints Commission could require.

I'm pretty sure, however, that the right-hand character on this rockery plant is either a Common Rustic or - more likely if size is a guide - a Lesser Common Rustic. There were half-a-dozen of these in the trap this morning along with many types of Yellow Underwing, lots of Riband and Twin-spot Waves and what I now know, thanks to Bill the Commentor, to be a Buff Footman.

But what is this? (Ah-ha, see update at end of post) It's completely distinctive but I can't tally it with anything in Waring, Townsend & Lewington, not even the Snouts whose tribe I first suspected. Is it a micro, in spite of its size? Or a Snout after all - Pinion-streakled? Buttoned? - within a wider range of variation than WT&L have room to show? Solutions warmly welcomed; meanwhile I'll sign off on a bright note. The sun has brought out both our buddleias and lots of butterflies. Here's a more than usually raggedy Comma absorbed in the tresses' great gusts of honey scent.

Update: my reliable crutch in identification matters, Charlie Fletcher the county moth recorder, identifies my mystery moth as the Garden Pebble - a micro but a pretty macro one. It likes cabbage and is therefore described as 'a nuisance to gardeners.' But I don't grow cabbages, so it is very welcome here. Oh and I did get the Dunbar and Common (or Lesser Common) Rustic right. You can't distinguish between the last two without some rather uncomfortable medical examination.

Huh!

2011-07-23T06:54:00.002+01:00

Some moths get all the good stuff when it comes to their names - the Willow Beauty, for example, or the Scarce Merveille du Jour. No such luck for the Dingy Footman, shown here. I know that he, or she, is not exactly spectacular, but dingy? Come on. In fact, I would say that the soft grey colour was rather tasteful, and the moth has the same neat trim as the other Footmans - men? - which gives the little tribe its name. Time for a rethink, moth authorities. Update: No, no. See Comments. It's more like time for a rebore of the Wainwright identifying mechanism...

The Satin Wave on the other hand has done well with its Christening. Update: Except, see Comments, this isn't one. MW muddles through again...how embarrassing. Deservedly, because as you can see, it is a pretty little moth. I disturbed this one in bright sunshine while putting the finishing touches to my late Mum's garden in readiness for our spectacular fun day in her memory today. Please keep sun-dancing; things so far look promising if a bit 'mixed' in the Met Office's favourite word.

There were good butterflies around yesterday, too: Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, whites, skippers, Holly Blue and this Gatekeeper, seen from afar. I had the camera on as much zoom as my ancient and slightly trembly hands render worthwhile; sorry the focus isn't sharper but you can make out the almost perfect white and slightly-chequered trim to the wings which suggests that this specimen is very newly-hatched indeed. I've cropped out the dead-heading which was still to do. I'm afraid I concentrated on that, rather than chasing the butterflies which were very jittery compared to light trap-doped moths.

In July, a young moth's fancy...

2011-07-22T07:33:00.000+01:00

It's always Spring time for an eager young moth, not surprisingly since most of them have only a few weeks in which to fulfil their Darwinian duty and breed. Here are two more displaying that rather obvious (to the human eye) sign that they seek a mate; either releasing pheremones or possibly 'whispering' ultrasound love messages as per the post of a couple of days below.

The patterning on these little Carpet moths is lovely (and responsible for their name; they don't eat carpets or anything else in the fabric department). Like Persian rugs, however, many of them are much alike and therefore a source of constant confusion to yours truly. I think that these are a Phoenix, top, and a Common Carpet, just above, but the latter may be a Broken-barred Carpet. Or, potentially embarrassing, are they both Phoenixes, showing how varied individual species can be in detail? I'm hoping that Ben Sale will come to my aid.

Here they are again in the same order, showing their Come Hither mechanisms at work. I must away, meanwhile, to sort final preparations for a major fun day in memory of my late Mum in her garden tomorrow. Please join in prayers, ultrasound whispers and anything else for sunshine in Leeds. Incidentally, I've already boasted here about how my Mum's best friend at school, Miggs Middleton, is the lovely Kate (and Pippa)'s great aunt. Now one of my uncles recalls that Mum's first date, at a dance at RAF Dishforth during the Second World War, was with Peter Middleton, our lovely princess's late Grandpa. How Royal am I!

Moths International

2011-07-20T08:18:00.004+01:00

Is there a moth which looks like Rebekah Brooks? It's a 'lookist' question, I know, but if you wear your hair like that...

I go for the Vapourer, shown here courtesy of Dr Chris Gibson of English Nature, or Natural England as they've renamed it for reasons unknown. It gives the same impression of a small face peering through curtains of russet hair.

As for the Murdochs, what else but the Uncertain (right) and Confused (below); or should these two moths be representing Messrs Stephenson and Yates? I know and hope that, in general, blogs like this are a refuge from the weird world of London politics. But I can't help wondering after watching yesterday's events whether we all mean the same thing by words such as 'integrity'. Talking of which, many thanks to the outstanding website UK Moths for these pictures.

Anyway, enough of that. Here are a Green Arches and a Muslin Moth to remind us that there are plenty of delightful things out there in the dark as well.

Happy 189th birthday to Gregor Mendel too! See Google's excellent pixie today. Thanks to him, our sweet peas are coming along well.

Whispering sweet mothings

2011-07-19T07:22:00.000+01:00

There should be plenty of Riband Waves here next year, judging by this contented pair which spent at least two hours in blissful union on the side of my shed. Their passion seems to have made them oblivious to moths' usual use of camouflage although the fact that they remained motionless preserved them from the many passing birds. We have a whole family of long-tailed tits in the garden, fledged this year, who give every appearance of enjoying life. They zoom around in a gang like teenagers, showing off their flying skills and twittering all the time (just like so many people these days...)

Sex isn't specially on my mind, but there is something priapic about this little chap - a pug? - who was dozing not far from the Riband Waves. I've speculated before about this curious way that some moths hold up their tails and this time I Googled. I found a Yahoo thread headed Why do moths stick their butts in the air? which has interesting info about the insects possibly (a) releasing pheremones to attract the opposite sex; and (b) emitting ultrasound 'whispers' to the same end. This led in turn to another fascinating internet page which contains the memorable lines:

Males of the Asian corn borer moth (Crambidae) were recently shown to whisper extremely low-intensity ultrasonic courtship songs close to females.

Never let anyone tell you that moths are boring - even corn-boring ones. And here's an enticing moth's-eye picture of the approach to my light trap just to round things off.

Interlude with a volcano

2011-07-18T07:31:00.003+01:00

I was going to write about mating moths this morning after an intimate discovery on the side of my garden shed. But I was reading online last night about the latest Indonesian volcanic eruption and I suddenly thought: 'Mount Lokon? That rings a bell.'

Indeed it does. Here it is in December 1985 when I was standing at the bottom trying to work out a way to the top. The smudgy zigzag to the right of the peak looked promising; it was a rare day of sunshine in usually humid, cloudy Sulawesi (formerly Celebes); and the whole scene was pleasantly reminiscent of Blencathra or somewhere like that.

In the event, what appeared from a distance to be springy turf was head-high elephant grass whose leaves have edges so sharp that you're sliced before you know it. The five of us (on an expedition organised by the Royal Entomological Society, which is at least a link with moths) soon looked like members of a flagellants' club. Worse was to come. The summit seemed a humdrum place with several empty bottles of Bintang (Star) beer dumped by previous visitors, but the descent was a nasty reminder that volcanoes need treating carefully. We were puzzled by the apparent absence of a crater but soon found ourselves unable to see anything more than 20 yards away as we climbed down into a thick, hot and sulphurous world of steam.

The climb became a slither, but luckily the eerie canopy lifted in time for us to see that too much more sliding on the rust-coloured scree would take us - woosh, plop! - over the rim of the crater into bubbling, boiling water to add flavouring to what looked un-nervingly like pea soup. I can genuinely say that the colours in my very amateurish watercolour are more true to life than the muddy effort of my then inadequate camera. We returned to base camp in the Dumoga-Bone rain forest wiser and more cautious than we were before.

Hello to the Lobed

2011-07-17T08:14:00.000+01:00

A new moth this morning and one I'm glad to see because I've noticed its picture in my moth Bible in the past and thought: well, that's one even I couldn't get wrong. It has an idiosyncratic pattern of pallid colour shaped like an egg-timer or Marilyn Monroe, although in the latter case the comparison ends there. Mind you, this one seems to have two small security staff scurrying about. I can't tell you how many little flies like that come to the trap at the moment. I don't know why the Double Lobed hasn't been here before as it's apparently common. However, the book lays it on thick about how much it likes damp places and Leeds definitely qualifies in that respect at the moment.

I've posted a lot about the Peppered Moth in the past and you can spend all day Googling about its special place in Darwinian theory and all the counter-attacks of the Creationists. I have better things to do, embarking on Day Two of majestic birthday celebrations for Penny, but here are a couple of pics cos it's such a lovely creature. A propos the Darwinian side of things, melanistic specimens are getting rarer and rarer these days. I've not had one here for at least two years.

Where's the moth?

2011-07-15T07:47:00.001+01:00

Moths are masters of camouflage and here is a Marbled Beauty to give us a lesson. Now you see it - below. Now you don't, or hardly - above. It's also a moth with a fondness for old buildings according to the experts; presumably plenty of crumbling plaster and flaking window frames can help it to hide.

This morning's other little star is this beautiful Tortrix moth, a micro which deserves the term as my special Penny Wainwright Pencil Scale shows. After much Google-imaging, I am pretty sure that it is Acleris forsskaleana whose surname intrigued me, so I clicked and Wiki-ed on.

It's worth reading the entry on Pehr Forsskal, whose name was given to the moth by Linnaeus himself, who also Christened a plant after the young Finn because it was similarly tenacious and stubborn. Forskkal seems to have been an all-round good egg, writing a Treatise on Civil Liberty which the Swedish authorities promptly suppressed. Here's a Wiki-pic of him looking tenacious but nice. What on earth would the moth make of all this?

A flag for Mothland

2011-07-14T07:27:00.001+01:00

If there were a country called Mothland, maybe this could be its flag. I always enjoy pictures where moths seem to be reading the instructions and advertisements on the eggboxes. This morning, the happy coincidence of an eggbox (complete with Angle Shades moth), red towel and grass looks like the banner of a freshly emerged nation. Here's the latest, for example: the flag of South Sudan.

The Angle Shades has a particularly sophisticated version of the shuttle-shaped marking common on the wings of many moths. Here's another example which visited last night: the Shuttle-shaped Dart with its neat little needle's eye. It reminds me of a clergyman. The eggbox seems to be imitating an advert for 'Jaws'.

Tawny and Dots

2011-07-13T07:55:00.000+01:00

The headline today sounds like one of those TV police duos such as Starsky and Hutch. Actually, it's a couple of nice but unassuming moths. One of them is new here - provided that I have identified it correctly, which regular readers will know is a big 'provided'.

Here it is and I think it's a Tawny-barred Angle, although I wondered for quite a while if it might be a melanistic or dark form of that familiar regular, the Riband Wave. This led me to a fascinating website thread by birdwatchers which you can read here, all about moths' internal genitalia and including a photograph of a Gatekeeper butterfly apparently trying to mate with a Painted Lady.

That sounds like something out of fiction, too. Mind you, the Painted Lady always has done; even as a child I used to wonder if it was slightly disreputable. Here's the second half of today's pair, meanwhile: the Straw Dot, below. A nice little moth which apparently has recently become scarcer in the north of England. So a special welcome.

Beautiful visitor

2011-07-11T07:46:00.002+01:00

The Swallow-tailed moth. What else can I say? Very familiar but very beautiful, and for once my camera hasn't picked up any reflected glow from the black of the trap bowl. If you know nothing about moths, you may have come across this one. It is drawn to lighted windows on summer nights, as well as to traps like mine.

The Brown China-mark is another lovely moth and Sherlock Holmes would make one deduction about my garden from its presence. "Drag the pond, Watson," he might say, as the pair of them search for the body of one of the fiendish Moriarty's victims. "The pond? My dear Holmes, how can you tell that there is a pond?" "Elementary, Watson. If there is a Brown China-mark moth, there will most certainly be a pond. Its caterpillars feed exclusively on aquatic plants.'

Update: just how good a detective would M.Wainwright really be, though? See comments...

Little and large

2011-07-10T08:47:00.000+01:00

Big, small and in-between in the trap this morning. At the big end, this Poplar Hawk is in very good condition, and interesting proof of how long generations can last. The first one this year arrived as long ago as 26th May and its generation has been recorded as late as early August, with a second one sometimes hatching in August and September in southern England. But emergence from the chrysalis will be staggered within the period, like London buses, and I'm sure that this one can only have hatched recently. I'm glad to have caught its maroon blotches and also the weird way it slides its underwings forward beneath the forewings. When fully 'sheathed', they stick right out in front.

In the middle range, here's a boldly-patterned Dark Arches, left, and our variable friend the Mottled Beauty, below right. Both species have been visiting for at least a month but, again, these two look very fresh.

And finally, that familiar micro with its sort-of specs pattern, which completes a trio of long-lasting species. Examples have also been arriving since May. For once, I managed to find something to give scale and show how titsy it is. On my first study of the eggboxes, I missed it altogether. It pays to have a second look.

Not a lot about moths

2011-07-09T09:09:00.004+01:00

I usually spend time here bewailing my inability to identify small brown and/or grey moths. There'll be another example in a mo. But first, here's some triumphant identifying of human beings, including myself when young. Even though we're grey too, or at least black and white.

I think I mentioned some time back that a flurry of nostalgia among my old university pals has led to much emailing of photos, mostly of elderly gents (we were all boys in 1968; the girls had to climb in), but including the original of the blurred one I use in the little blog corner about who I am (or was).

This coincided with one of the regular outbreaks of 'Oxbridge mafia' charges at The Guardian which always get some readers excited about a supposedly contraband list of members, including my innocent self. There's no secret about any of it. For better or worse, I was at Merton College, Oxford, in the good old revolutionary days and here we all are: my fresh-faced year in 1968.

I'm the saucy one three from the left in the front row, looking as though I'm enjoying a private joke with a moth. But more interesting is the guy with the Beatle cut two rows back from me, two from the right. That's Sir Alec Jeffreys who has done more good than the rest of us put together, through his work on DNA fingerprinting. The chunky guy to his left is Chris Laidlaw, then a New Zealand All-Black who I see from his Wikipedia entry is keeping the spirit of '68 alive, huzza.

When we all exchanged emails with pics of us as old giffers, Sir Alec apologised that his had the curious catchline 'stamp' - left over from an initiative by the Royal Mail which sadly apparently has to wait until he is in Heaven. Personally, I say: 'We demand a commemorative stamp for Sir Alec Jeffreys now!' And now, before I go and have my breakfast, here is yet another mystery moth, below. Does anyone know what it is? A Snout of some kind? A Fantail type? And does it really have a green sheen, or is it picking that up from the eggbox? I just clicked on it to enlarge it, btw, and notice that half of its left-hand antenna is missing. Poor thing. Update: Ah-ha, Gotcha! See Comments.

Head-on view

2011-07-08T08:01:00.000+01:00

It was a bit of an exciting day yesterday, what with the News of the World imploding. I was down in London at the Guardian's head office when the news broke and it was one of those moments which won't fade quickly from my memory. Actually my own role in events was characteristic; I had was just sitting back contentedly after finishing a story about...moths. It's linked here, and you may be interested in joining the great Horse Chestnut - Save Our Conkers survey.

Meanwhile the lights have come on again all over the world, as Vera Lynn sang; at least they have in my garden. Above is a quizzy creature for you. Recognise it? It's actually a common but very beautiful visitor as shown - don't look now - at the bottom of this post. Moths' faces are extraordinary, but this is what a flower would see, if it had eyes.

Meanwhile here is a tiny visitor which makes big headlines. The pip-sized Spindle Ermine is the moth which can weave those dramatic but harmless canopies of silk which occasionally take over whole lines of trees, parked cars etc and prompt Doomsday articles in, well, papers such as the News of the World. Talking of Doomsday, I came home late last night to find that there had been a major fall of hail. In July! But it's actually keeping very warm.

Oh and here's the quiz answer. The good old Burnished Brass:

Mmmmmm.....

2011-07-07T06:54:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday I was jealous of my American friends Sarah, Greg and family and their Luna moth. Today my envy is closer to home, with this picture from Kay Easton, a neighbour just up the hill here. She kindly sent me this picture of a visitor to her garden - very kindly, as work is still stopping me from trapping at the mo.

I spent ages taking pictures of these in Paxos last year and reproduce my famous (to me) 'miracle' photo of one below with its Heavenly sunbeam. But they're everywhere in the Greek Islands and altogether much rarer here. The last time I saw one in the UK was in Manorbier, near Tenby, when I was ten.

They do keep coming, though. I've been checking my ancient record books and the lists for Yorkshire compiled by George Porritt between 1883 and 1922 record instances from Barnsley to York, while describing the moth as 'very uncertain in appearance' apart from a scorching annus mirabilis in 1865. The excellent journal Atropos meanwhile shows that 27 were trapped at Spurn Point last year, one of the ring of coastal monitoring stations which I described in the Observer article the other day. Check out Atropos' great website, with its 'Live Flight Arrivals' icon - for moths not EasyJet planes.

Hoping Kay's lovely moth comes my way - though not to the trap. It's another of the daytime flyers.

Peek-a-Boo

2011-07-05T15:06:00.000+01:00

Sorry I'm so late today; things have been busy. For the same reason I didn't switch the trap on last night although it was balmy weather. Tonight, maybe...though we've just had a very welcome sprinkling of rain. Things are getting to look a bit parched - it's interesting how quickly that happens.

Anyway, here are a couple of pals from last time the light was on. The Dark Arches above is saying in moth language, I am sure, "Leave me alone. Don't you know what time it is?" The Small Fanfoot below just looks so nice that I wanted to share it with the world. It's how I imagine Jane Eyre.

Finally, another quiz time, although this one is probably only for my kindly American pals unless there's someone very knowledgeable elsewhere in the world. My friend the excellent painter Sarah Meredith was dozing away the other night in the muggy weather they're having in upper New York state (where everywhere has familiar names such as Delhi and Cairo but they're all pronounced differently, eg Del-Hi and Kay-Ro). Then she heard a flutter or possibly a scrabbling and peering out into the darkness, beyond her eminent husband Greg's foot, she saw this beast on their window screen.

"

It was half the size of my palm - the biggest moth I've seen here since a Luna when we moved in," she emails. A Luna! Oh lucky America! Well, I've no doubt that it's a hawk moth of some kind, but does any Sphingidae expert know which one?

I wouldn't if I was you

2011-07-04T08:18:00.000+01:00

I've been too busy to trap this weekend, though I watched some moths last night over a candlelit glass of wine outside in the gloaming. Yes, England really can be like this. So here's a picture I took on Friday of a bold Light Emerald about to go abseiling. It survived the experience and fluttered away.

In case you ever wondered, here's another picture from Friday showing what a moth trap looks like - to a human. The eyesight of moths is still the subject of much study but they seem to see a sort of kaleidoscope of images. You can imagine what a great big shining light, much too bright for we humans to stare at directly, does to a delicate system such as that.

And now it's quiz time. Does anyone know what lives in here, above? Spiders, I suspect. Or maybe insect larvae. I didn't think it right to disturb them, but please tell me if you recognise the architectural style.

And finally, right, all sorts of moths are venturing out into the sunlight when you brush past bushes. Here's one of those extraordinary T-shaped micros with the pleasantly human-sounding name of Emmelina mondactyla - Emma Singlewing. It has to unroll its wings like a Venetian blind before scooting away.

A blaze of unexpected colour - shield your eyes...

2011-07-03T10:29:00.000+01:00

Yippee! This is more like it! I have dutifully brought you a series of small and interesting moths the last few days, but I have secretly been yearning for colour. Here it is! We're having a family bramble-bash/gardening marathon this weekend at my late Mum's garden, ready for a fun commemoration of her life later this month. The sun's blazing and the butterfleis are out - I'm glad to say; there haven't been as many so far in this warm spell as I'd have expected. I think it's coincided with a time when one brood is almost over and the next one not quite hatched.

AND the moths were out too. The two top pictures are a day-flying Six Spot Burnet which enjoys the sunshine as much as any butterfly and has an equal dislike of the dark. After posing on the thistle for a while, it whirred off like some bizarre helicopter until I found it again on the grass blade. The flight method is strange indeed but colourful, as the red hindwings are particularly prominent if blurred by rapid flapping. I'll try to catch one in motion with the camera today.

My bramble-bashing also disturbed lots of the pretty creature in the third picture - Yellow Shells which are sort-of day-flying in that they doze lightly in hedges and are only too pleased to take a little flight if disturbed. And the butterflies were out too: Tortoiseshell, Comma, the first Red Admiral I've seen this season, assorted Whites and this Meadow Brown (right - and look at its wing 'struts' like an old biplane's) and Ringlet (above, swoon). The last two were the only ones which settled long enough for my ageing photographic methods. They have mothy brown colours, but aren't they lovely? I still remember my excitement when I first caught a Ringlet in the old netting days. Probably around 1958... So here's another one - and below that, a couple of Meadow Browns getting ready to make sure that next year sees a good lot too.

Thumbnail sketch

2011-07-02T07:34:00.000+01:00

"Ah, the pugs!" said a more experienced mothing friend not long ago. "Wait 'til you get to the pugs. You'll love them." Well, I'm not waiting, but the pugs are. For my love, I mean. I think the presumed leisure of retirement will be the only way to kindle passion, when there's time to sort out these tiny creatures which to my notoriously unforensic eye, all look alike. And there are about 50 of them, all classified as macro moths in spite of their diminutive size.

At least this one has various distinctions, especially that lovely russet colour, like a warm brick in the current sunshine. So I'm risking my tattered reputation to say that it is a Double-striped Pug (you can make out the double stripes too, just, slanting down the wings.) Meanwhile here is a micro on my thumb, to show how small they are. Mind you, it's not got to grow much to outdo a pug.

Sorry, I do bite my nails. Always have, always will. It's the only safe way. So-called 'nail' scissors tend to cut to the quick and I can't understand how to use those clipper things.

Minimalism

2011-07-01T07:37:00.003+01:00

Tiny moth, tiny post. I tried the trap in a very shady area last night and the catch fell spectacularly. There were half-a-dozen Light Emeralds, three Mottled Beauties, a clutch of Hebrew Characters, Dark Arches et al. But the only novelty which caught my interest was this little chap on my dressing gown. So far I have Googled 'tortrix, micro moth, dotted and chequered' in various combinations without success. But as Che Guevara always said: 'La lutta continua. Hasta la vittoria siempre.' Or words to that effect.

Update: Yay! The mighty Ben Sale has done the business already. It's Lozotaenia forsterana, which doesn't seem to have an English name. So I hereby Christen it the Chequered Tortrix.

Spinach or Straw

2011-06-30T07:05:00.002+01:00

I was hoping that this ungainly creature was a Spinach moth - not that they're rare or anything but it's such an intriguing name for an insect which has no obvious connection with Popeye and whose caterpillars feed exclusively on red and blackcurrant. They are at least green, with white lines, so perhaps that's the explanation. I shall browse on Google.

However, this isn't a Spinach but a Barred Straw, the only British moth to rest with its wings stretched out at what looks like an uncomfortable angle. It's common too but I haven't recorded it here before, so that's another one for my next list revision, along with the Short Cloaked, that oddity the other day which I compared to Moses on Pisgah.

Yesterday's intriguing beast turns out, as per kind and much-appreciated Comments on the post, to be a Ruby-tailed Wasp. It is a lot less nice than its name suggests, cuckooing its larvae into the nests of other solitary wasps and bees, where they eat their hosts. I never feel happy when the term 'un-natural' is applied to various undesirable or unpopular forms of human behaviour. Nature is awash with undesirable goings-on.

But here's a sweet little Single-dotted Wave to end on a positive note. Its behaviour is as demure as its appearance suggests.

I spy my little fly

2011-06-29T07:38:00.002+01:00

Some pretty moths fluttered in last night, with pleasant weather continuing. If you are taking your UK weather reports from Wimbledon, you'll have the wrong impression of what it's been like in Yorkshire. Lovely and sunny, albeit quite a lot cooler and fresher at night than it was over the humid, sub-tropical weekend. The rainstorms only affected London and the south-east; and I'm glad to say that the radio has just chirruped: "It's a beautiful morning in Wimbledon." Hooray!

Anyway, I'm putting the moths on hold 'til tomorrow, to show you my interesting flies. People often raise an eyebrow when they discover you're interested in moths (soon lowering it, though, and enquiring about Watkins & Doncaster, entomological suppliers, after you've explained the fascination and beauty...) But flies?

Well, just have a look at these pictures, of what to the eye was a glinting but otherwise small and annoyingly buzzy speck trying to get out of our bedroom window. They almost make me want to be a dipterist, specially the one at the top which has some of that lonely appeal of ET - a small creature alone in a vast universe... How about you?

If anyone knows what this is, needless to say, I'd be delighted to know. Update: see excellent Comments - it's the lovely-sounding Ruby-tailed Wasp.

Hiding in the grass

2011-06-28T07:55:00.003+01:00

A couple of mediaeval-sounding moths arrived last night. The Grey (or Dark) Dagger and the Gothic could well feature in one of the Waverley novels or a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Both perhaps fall into the smallish brown and grey moth category, from which arrivals such as yesterday's Ghost moth are such welcome exceptions; but their wing patterns are lovely and explain their names. Here's the Gothic in better focus, left, showing its intricate arches, like a church window. I say 'Grey or Dark' for the Dagger, incidentally, because the species are indistinguishable unless you examine their genitalia, which I don't plan to do.

The pair were among at least 20 moths which didn't actually enter the trap but settled on grass and plants round about and went to sleep there. A lot of moth recorders spread a white sheet under and around their traps and these seem to attract arrivals in the same way that a nice big bed with clean sheets does me, when I'm whacked. I saw this in action when I went trapping in North Yorkshire with Charlie Fletcher & Co in April for the Radio 4 programme Requiem for a Moth. It was impressive, but I haven't negotiated a sheet from our airing cupboard with Penny yet.

Meanwhile, here are some of the near-trap loiterers - pictures in order from top to bottom of the post: a Swallowtailed moth, the first of the season here but already a bit ragged; a Canary (one of a pair), a Light Emerald, a Riband Wave and a Clouded Border. There were also half-a-dozen other Light Emeralds, two Common Footmen and a Small Mottled Beauty and altogether it was a pretty sight.

Charlie has been emailing me kindly to identify moths, and says that he had 101 different species in his trap at Ripon the night before last. These are indeed the high days for UK moths.

Hamlet, 'tis thy father's ghost

2011-06-27T07:54:00.001+01:00

I was going to tell you about a fascinating fly on our bedroom window last night, but this handsome creature appeared in the trap this morning and scooped my plan. It's a Ghost moth, well-named for obvious reasons, although the females have a different, buttery-streaked-with-orange livery. Actually they look like those novelty Wensleydale cheeses dotted with odd fruits which they make now at the 'Wallace and Gromit' creamery in Hawes.

The male here is more of a slice of camembert, although his underside is quite different. My specimen was very sleepy and so quite co-operative. I'm sorry not to have got the focus dead-on, but here he is from below; a sort of mushroom grey.

The Ghost adds a distinctive word to the vocabulary of moths: lekking. This is the term used for the male's distinctive habit of fluttering over one spot with a pendulum-like action, sometimes in numbers, while releasing a powerful pheromone scent. Powerful is the word because although it smells like goat, the effect on females is so overwhelming that they sometimes fly straight at the male and both tumble to the ground. There they get on with it, according to my moth Bible from which I am taking all this on trust. It adds, "mating pairs are conspicuous on low vegetation by torchlight."

This reminds me of footnotes in my school Shakespeare by an American academic called Kitteridge whose ability to detect naughty meanings in the text knew no bounds. He enlivened many a dull lesson and I hope he still appears in the editions they use today. I'll just end with a moth-in-motion pic - sorry, inevitably blurred again, but I wanted to see if the hindwings were white too and I had such a co-operative moth. They are.

(Not) losing my marbles

2011-06-26T08:15:00.002+01:00

I don't want to be disrespectful, specially on a Sunday, but this tiny scrap of a moth immediately made me think of Moses on Pisgah, or at least a priest or vicar about to address the congregation.

I had hoped that it might be a macro moth but unless it's a strongly-coloured Small Marbled, I think it's going to join the list of micros awaiting identification in my retirement (though thanks to Steve T in a comment on yesterday's post for tracking another of them down. Much obliged). Doesn't it have a fine, aristocratic nose? And that tawny micro must be Joshua, nipping back down the mountain to tell the Children of Israel.

These moths are about half as long as a grown-up's fingernail, but you can see the beauty of their colouring and patterns in the view to the right, taken after I caught the eggbox with my dressing gown (checking the trap is an early morning, pre-tea job so long as I have the willpower to get up). It fluttered down from Pisgah but fortunately settled. I was less lucky with a beautiful Brown China Mark micro, one of the loveliest and largest of the common ones, which skimmed away.

Talking of beauty, this next moth is a delight to see, albeit common enough. It's a Marbled Beauty which obligingly went to sleep for the night close to a Peppered moth (below, bottom of post) which has a similar swatch of soft and gentle colours. There were a lot of other arrivals, although not a record for the year, in spite of the very warm temperatures. Apparently we may enjoy a brief heatwave this weekend. Bring it on. Just a reminder btw that you can single-click on any of these pics to make them bigger.

Oh, and welcome to anyone who's come here via a link from the Observer, which generously gave me - and more important the UK's moths - two whole pages today, with lots of lovely pics. If you want to go the other way, click on the link, or there's a gallery online here. Moth power! Yay! (Even if they were suspiciously keen to highlight the clothes moth, because the editor's had an infestation.)

Unlikely twins

2011-06-25T09:28:00.000+01:00

Anyone from Leeds has to like a moth called the Dark Arches. The same name belongs to one of the spookiest parts of our city where the river Aire turns into the Styx and winds beneath the City Station in a labyrinth of brick-lined tunnels. It's been titivated in recent years and renamed Granary Wharf but the old name persists. Rather as when the Guardian's former Northern Editor Harry Whewell was rung up to be told that in future Manchester's famous Midland Hotel would be known as the Majestic Renaissance Midland, or whatever, and replied laconically: "Not by me it won't."

There are a lot of 'arches' moths, so called because of patterns on their wings and, to annoy inept identifyers such as myself, they often vary considerably within individual species. Thus this pair, enjoying a rather uplifting essay about free range hens in their eggbox, are both Dark Arches. The really dark one is the melanistic version, still found quite frequently in formerly dirty industrial areas where natural selection favoured its camouflage. It's known as the form Aethiops, a lovely word which brings to mind that Shakespearian tag: "It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night, as a rich jewel on an Ethiop's ear." Eeh, he had a silver tongue, that Romeo.

It's been a catch of pairings, too. Here's one of the first Dun-bars of the season with a micro, almost invisible in the gloomy, Dark Arches-like recesses of the eggbox cone at the right of the picture. I haven't identified that yet and may never do so. And, below, a pretty little Marbled Minor with a minute companion and its slip showing. Veritably a moth Juliet.

Dainty trio

2011-06-24T07:33:00.001+01:00

A whole squadron of Light Emeralds overnighted here last night. They were waking up when I arrived with my camera and most of them scrambled and flitted off into our holly hedge before I could sort myself out. This one briefly crash-landed in the grass, however, and gave me enough time to do these top and bottom shots. Sorry the antennae are blurred, but you can scroll down to yesterday's post to see one in focus.

Less lively was this Clouded Border, a sweet little visitor which was on the outside of the plastic cowl and didn't want to leave even when I gently blew it off into the safety of the hedge. And lastly, here's a fine example of the ladies' fur coat brigade of moths, the Slender Brindle. Charlie Fletcher (see post below again for the benign effects of his moth learning) calls these Brenda Slindles. Watch out for that name in my popular novel, should I ever manage to write it.

Wholly engrailed (except not...see update at end of post)

2011-06-23T07:32:00.002+01:00

We have silver birch trees round about and so we also have the Engrailed and Small Engrailed moths, whose caterpillars live on birch and sallow leaves. I'm relieved to read that even experts have difficulty in telling these two moths apart and some believe that they are actually one species. (Uh-oh. See update at end of post...)

After screwing my eyes up and holding the picture every which way, I think that this one is a Small Engrailed. Actually there were two, in another well-filled trap this morning. The one at the top of the post posed placidly with its wings out, showing a pattern which makes excellent camouflage on most tree trunks.

The other one was extremely frisky and only briefly paused in the long grass before fluttering away. Flutter is the right word for these delicate, relatively large-winged moths, rather than the US drone-style approach favoured by their chunkier, fat-bodied colleagues such as the yellow underwings or the Dark Arches. Their beautiful antennae help them in flight and I have zoomed in on one. I wish humans had antennae. Maybe evolution will given them to us, one day.

Update: Oh dear. All the above applies, except the moth is a Mottled Beauty. Many thanks to Ben (see Comments) and also Charlie Fletcher who popped me an email (with a consoling smiley). It's a Mottled Beauty. Sorry. They're all very similar to my ageing eyes, although look how much more varied Ben's is, left, on the pic from the Flickr link which he gives in his comment. Anyway we've got it right now. The MB is a voracious fan of Silver Birch but has an appetite almost as catholic as my own. According to Waring, Townend and Lewington, its caterpillars have been found contentedly living on oak, ash, blackthorn (of which we have a hedge), hawthorn, barberry, broom, bilberry (hooray - and see this piece on the Guardian's Northerner), heather. bramble, traveller's joy, honeysuckle, juniper, Norway spruce, Lawson cypress, Japanese red cedar, western hemlock spruce, angelica and St John's wort. Goodness.)

A wave of waves

2011-06-22T07:45:00.003+01:00

Let's wave at the Waves, a pretty family of moths whose arrival signals pleasant things such as the summer solstice, midsummer's day and the like. I was too sleepy to take much note of the shortest night of 2011, but the moths were certainly out enjoying it. It was drizzling this morning but the trap contained several hundred slumberers, including two Elephant Hawks, two Green Arches, a nice Buff Ermine and far too many mind-taxing brown and grey characters.

The waves are a Single-Dotted and a Riband, at the top and just above. The Single-dotted defies language as it clearly has two dots, as you can see. Maybe I am setting myself up as a twerp by misidentifying it, but I don't think so. Shall we rename it the Double-dotted Wave?

There was also the first Angle Shades of the year, a rakish moth and another of those whose striking wing shape must surely have influenced or at least intrigued aircraft designers. I remember my Mum ringing me up in excitement a couple of years ago when she found one below her porch light and wondered what it was. It would be interesting to see one fly and compare its actions with the mad jerkings of the Large Yellow Underwing. Maybe, one day, when I've got more sophisticated filming techniques.

Finally, can any of my expert readers tell me what on earth this is? An aberration? Or something brown, grey and boring which has met with a flying accident?

Update: Charlie Fletcher, West Yorkshire's county moth recorder, comes to the rescue. It's either a Marble Minor or Tawny Marbled Minor which has got into some kind of trouble and lost its scales. The two species are almost impossible to tell apart - and on that score, see the next post above, about the Engraileds. Even later update: except they're Mottled Beauties... See above. ;)

It used to be a cannibal...

2011-06-21T13:10:00.000+01:00

I had the trap out all ready yesterday evening because it was lovely and warm. But as night fell, so did the rain. I was saved, in terms of having something to post, by my brother-in-law who came for a weekend walk with us and showed me this moth caught in a bowl of gypsophila on top of his TV.

It took some disentangling but here it is; dull to look at but quite an interesting insect. It's a Bee Moth, notable for having one of the few carnivorous caterpillars found among UK species. They live as guests in wasps and bees' nest (though not commercial hives) and then ungratefully turn on the wasp or bee larvae when they are big enough to subdue and eat them without a fight.

Yuk. The adults don't go in for any of this sort of thing, though. Those secateur-style nippers they have on their heads (as visible below during the moth's getaway) are palps, sensitory organs as recently described in a post on the Snout moth. The Bee moth is also interesting in that the females have (slightly) brighter and more interesting wing-colour and patterning than the extremely boring males, such as this one. It's usually the other way round.

Hiding their lights

2011-06-20T07:39:00.002+01:00

A lesson in patience this morning. Although the night had been reasonably mild and the light was in a prominent spot, the eggboxes yielded only a score of Heart and Darts, two Large Yellow Underwings and a half-dozen micro-moths. Until the very last box, underneath was perched this Bordered White, notable for pretending to be a butterfly by resting with its wings folded above its back, like all British butterflies, rather than flat-back, like almost all our moths.

It will never get away with this, however, because look at those marvellous antennae. No British butterfly boasts anything like that. They all have a simple club shape, one of the other ways that we can tell the two types of insect apart. Mind you, it's only the male Bordered White which boasts these TV aerials. The female would be a better impersonator with her narrow and unadorned - but unclubbed - versions. I guess the difference will have something to do with male detection of females which can take place in moths at impressively large distances.

Then I carried out the formality of checking foliage near the trap, something which seldom yields any moths in my experience, probably because I am not a very patient detective. But I promptly spotted this Common Footman, the first of the year, dozing on a leaf of our 'Pineapple' plant, an incredibly vigorous shrub which scrambles up our back wall, multiple-leaved but very sparing in its production of lupin-like yellow flowers.

The footman is sparing with its yellow too; from above it looks like its namesake in very sober livery. But this one fortuitously fluttered from its perch and ended up, briefly, upside down, before creeping into a paving-stone crack, below. It is a true Lincolnshire yellow-belly, as you can see.

Bob's dynasty goes on

2011-06-19T08:16:00.000+01:00

Rain continues to stop play, except indoors. No moths have fluttered inside from the gentle but continuous downpour, but here is (possibly) the great-grandson (or daughter) of Bob, our favourite spider who comes out to watch the News at Ten.

The sight of Huw Edwards seems to appeal to the family, as I showed in photos on posts in 2008, of the first post-Bob generation (left), and then last year of a putative grandchild (below, not for the squeamish). I've rather messed up the latest picture by pressing the Enhance button on iPhoto, which turned the colours a bit lurid. I haven't found an Undo button to click, so there we are.

Great-grandchild is living currently under the central heating pipes in our kitchen, and makes many bold sallies to help us with our usual vacuuming round. (Isn't that an odd-looking word, vacuum? Though it only comes from the Latin for empty, vacuus). It would be interesting, for the strong-stomached, to compile a list of all the creatures which share our house with us, from mites to bats. I read a book once called The Life that Lives on Man and was suitably appalled.

Good Housekeeping, Vol 2

2011-06-18T09:32:00.006+01:00

It rained last night and the forecast is for more. Not many people are complaining about that, especially down south, although spare a thought for June brides today. What a lottery our English weather is.

Anyway, I have been using the time to check out the number of different species which have come to my trap; and before that, those which I saw by other means, including a pretty unproductive but stickily enjoyable rum-and-treacling session with small cousins five or six years ago. The news is, that we have hit 200, including a dozen or so micros. I have been very conservative in my counting, not adding varieties or aberrations as extras, and I know for certain that half-a-dozen at least of small, boring or otherwise baffling moths have escaped this census.

Anyway, here they are, with the new ones since my first (and last) attempt at Good Housekeeping on 1st August 2009, when the tally was 158, in bold. I've included a couple of pictures of the other night's micromoths with lurid scale indicators such as my blurred thumb, to stop this post looking too boring.

Alder, Angle Shades, Angle-striped Sallow, Antler, Autumnal Rustic, Barred Red, Barred Yellow,Beautiful Golden Y, Black Rustic, Blackneck, Blair’s Shoulder Knot, Bloodvein, Bordered White, Bright-line Brown-eye, Brimstone, Brindled Green, Brown China Mark, Brown Silver-line, Buff Arches, Buff Ermine, Buff Footman, Buff Tip, Burnished Brass, Canary-shouldered Thorn, Centre-barred Sallow, Chestnut, Chimney Sweeper, Cinnabar, Clouded Border, Clouded-bordered Brindle (plus ab Combusta), Clouded Drab, Clouded Brindle, Clouded Silver, Common Carpet, Common Emerald, Common Footman, Common Marbled Carpet, Common Quaker, Common Rustic, Common Swift, Common Wainscot, Common Wave, Common White Wave, Common Yellow Underwing, Copper Underwing and/or Svensson’s C.U. (impossible to distinguish without expert help), Coxcomb Prominent, Cream Wave, Crescent, Dark Arches, Dark-barred

Twin-spot Carpet, Dark Brocade, Dark Dagger, Dark Marbled Carpet, Dark Spectacle, Dark Swordgrass, Dot, Dun-bar, Dusky Brocade, Dusky Thorn, Early Grey, Early Thorn, Elephant Hawk, Engrailed, Fan-foot, Feathered Thorn, Figure of 80, Flame, Flame Carpet, Flame Shoulder, Flounced Rustic, Foxglove Pug, Frosted Orange, Garden Carpet, Ghost, Gold Spangle, Gold Spot, Golden-rod Pug, Gothic, Green Arches, Green-brindled Crescent, Green Carpet, Green Pug, Green Silver Lines, Grey Arches, Grey Birch, Grey Dagger, Grey Scalloped Bar, Heart and Dart, Hebrew Character, Herald, Ingrailed Clay, Iron Prominent, July Highflyer, Knot Grass, Large Emerald, Large Yellow Underwing, Lead-coloured Drab, Lempke’s Gold Spot

Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, Lesser Common Rustic, Lesser Swallow Prominent, Light Emerald, Lime Hawk including Var Brunnea, Lunar Underwing, Lunar Marbled Brown, Lychnis, Marbled Beauty, Marbled Minor, May Highflyer, Micros: Barred Fruit-tree Tortrix (Pandemis ceranasa) - shown above with a Poplar Hawk moth wing for scale - Bird-cherry Ermine, Brown Grey (Scoparia ambigualis), Catopria margaritella, Diurnia fagella, Dipleurina lacustrata, Emmelina monodactyla, Garden Rose Tortrix, Green Oak Roller (Tortrix viridiana), Mother of Pearl, Plume (Stenophilia sp.), Pyrausta aurata, Spindle Ermine, 20-plume, Ypsolopha Sequella, Middle-barred Minor, Miller, Mottled Beauty, Mottled Rustic, Narrow-bordered Five-spot Burnet, November moth, Oak Hooktip, Orange Swift, Orange Underwing, Pale Brindled Beauty, Pale Mottled Willow, Pale Pinion, Pale Prominent, Pale-shouldered Brocade, Pale Tussock (including dark variety), Peach Blossom, Pebble Hook Tip, Pebble Prominent, Peppered (including melanistic variety), Phoenix, Pink-barred Sallow, Plain Golden Y, Poplar Hawk, Purple Bar

Purple Thorn, Red Underwing, Red-green Carpet, Red-lined Quaker, Riband Wave, Rivulet, Rosy Rustic, Ruby Tiger, Rufous Minor, Sallow, Sallow Kitten, Satin Beauty, Satellite, Scalloped Hazel (including var nigra), Scalloped Hook-tip, Scalloped Oak, Scarce Silver Lines, Scorched Wing, September Thorn, Setaceous Hebrew Character, Shaded Broad-bar, Shoulder-striped Wainscot, Shuttle-shaped Dart, Silver Y, Single-dotted Wave, Slender Brindle, Small Angle Shades, Small Fanfoot, Small Fan-footed Wave, Small Magpie, Small Phoenix, Small Quaker, Smoky Wainscot, Snout, Spectacle, Spruce Carpet, Square-spot Rustic, Straw Dot, Streamer, Swallow Prominent, Swallowtailed, Treble Bar, True Lover’s Knot, Twin-spotted Quaker, V-pug, White Ermine, Willow Beauty, Winter moth, Yellow-line Quaker

Hooray! Great names, aren't they?

Finally, I have cracked Charlie's last clue (see posts below) to reveal Scoparia ambigualis or the Brown Grey moth. Like the others in his puzzle, it has been here before, so I should have recognised it. Here it is again, anyway, to conclude today's proceedings, shown for scale beside a Heart and Dart.

Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be...

2011-06-17T16:55:00.005+01:00

The season moves on, and familiar faces from this time last year - or in some cases a few weeks ahead because of the warmer Spring this time round - have started to congregate in the trap. Above we've got a rather handsome Dusky Brocade and then I think that these two below are Common Rustics,a famously variable moth. Update. No we haven't got a Dusky Brocade, sorry. It's a rather handsome Grey Arches. Thanks to Ben the Real Expert (see Comments) who also nails the third moth as a Clouded-bordered Brindle.

As for this pretty little Carpet, reading the Egg Code upside down, below, I had to put on my strong reading glasses to try to work out which one it is of a similar-looking bunch in Waring, Townend and Lewington. That wasn't conclusive so I went to UK Moths on the internet and I'm plumping for the Silver-ground Carpet, a lovely and dainty little moth.

I have just finished writing an enormously long piece, by my paltry standards, for the Observer on the massive growth of interest in moths. They are the New Birdwatching! Yo! Should be in on Sunday.

Seven out of eight (so far)

2011-06-16T17:02:00.001+01:00

Hmmm... I think Charlie's fixed the bar a bit high in the Grand Competition which he set in the post below. I just checked a new discovery of mine on this blog - the section called Stats in the organising page - and I see to my amazement and joy that people have landed on the site from Brazil, Iran and other far-flung spots. But they must still be puzzling over the Fletcher Anagrams, and very nobly not feeding them into an anagram decoding machine, because no one has come up with answers, yet.

I haven't done any anagram machine cheating either, and I'm still puzzling over the second micro - the asparagus clue. But I've cracked the other seven and since I don't want to prolong competitors' agonies or the travails of Worm (see Comment on post below), here they are in the order of Charlie's clues.

Shuttle-shaped Dart
Common Marbled Carpet
Dusky Brocade
Large Yellow Underwing
Pandemis cerasana (that was tough) Also known as The Barred Fruit Tree Tortrix
Rustic Shoulder Knot
Pale Mottled Willow

...and then the mystery moth. More on that when I finally triumph, unless someone beats me to it. If you do, you will win the Valuable Prize, because otherwise I will have to award it to Charlie who is claiming it on the logical but morally dubious grounds that he knows the answers.

None of the above are new here, incidentally, which shows the difficulty of moth identification, at least so far as I am concerned.

This is the first post on this blog not to have a picture. Fact.
It is also the first to be posted from a mobile on a train. Groundbreaking stuff...

Test your wits...

2011-06-14T11:23:00.002+01:00

Tarantara!

Here is only the second competition in the blog's history. (The first was the Great Heart-and-Dart Guessing Game, mentioned a few posts below).

I wasn't planning this, but there was quite a good catch of hard-for-me-to-identify moths in the trap last night (the weather turning nice again, after a cold, wet snap). On a whim, I emailed pictures of eight of them to my local expert Charlie Fltcher and also Jax Westmoreland of Yorkshire Butterfly Conservation - fatally adding that "I am planning to identify them later."

Here is Charlie's reply, which is also the Second Grand Competition. I suppose I asked for it. I should and will try to puzzle it out myself, but all friendly readers and commentors are most welcome to join in. I promise not to look...

Over to Charlie:

Hi Martin

Another selection of nice brown moths I see!

As you are going to have a stab at solving them yourself, I won't identify them directly, but here are anagrams of the common names - or scientific names for the two micros:

3348 Hustled death-traps (this is the female)
3356 Becalm port commander
3359 Duckboard? Yes!
3366 Willowy gender granule
3370 Academia spanners
3372 Undershirt-lockouts
3377 Little moped wallow
3386 Iambic asparagus oil (I'm sure you use this in your cooking!)

And here are the moths (in the order given above) for competition fans to identify.

Happy brain-crunching! I will try to think of a nice prize for all who enter.

I really won't cheat, I swear. But they are brown and grey and quite difficult, don't you agree? Note that bit of blue on Moth No.4's wing btw. I'm very interested in that.

xM