Still among the diddy moths

Sorry to test the patience of my expert readers, but here's another micro moth in the absence of anything of greater interest in the trap. This one was on the tiled wall of our loo and its silvery livery prompted immediate cashmere-based fears that it might be one of the very small number of UK clothes-munching species. (It's the caterpillars which munch, not the moths. Still they are relatives).

I think that for once I've managed to show how tiny these creatures are, thanks to the moth agreeing to be transferred from the wall on the advice leaflet for my new iPhone - a work bonus which I've given in the optimistic hope that I will be able to make films. Actually, this is surprisingly easy with the help of YouTube and I may carry out some of my training here. Get ready for some exciting movies of sleeping moths...

Once the coming British Wildlife Publishing Bible on micro-moths is out, I promise to try to work out what these creatures are. But for now, I'm stumped. btw Penny is keen to add that the even tinier speck below the Biro and pad in the bottom picture isn't a micro-micro-moth. It's a mini-stalk of mustard (as in mustard and cress).

Update: Uh-oh as the Tellytubbies used to say; Samuel Millar in Comments confirms that this is indeed one of the (VERY few) moth baddies: a White-shouldered house moth or Endrosis sarcitrella.  Nice to have a micro with a 'common name' in English, which somehow makes them more accessible. This one is no longer accessible, however, as it got caught up in our washing up and went down the plug. Not intentionally on our part, I swear.  

Happy Anniversary!

It's our Wedding Anniversary today and the trap has furnished a couple of appropriate moths which I photographed in this morning's bright May sunshine. First a lovely Powdered Quaker which has something of the bride about it, maybe. Slightly off-white, I confess, but not I think too much of a Miss Havisham.

And then here is this dashing Early Grey, standing in for the groom - who 33 years ago did indeed wear a rather fine cord suit of light grey into which he could no longer possibly fit. With commendable decorum, both moths settled on the tasteful, pastel eggboxes, rather than the bold and brassy Happy Eggs ones.

I was wrong in one respect in my forecast yesterday btw; the weather is much better now but 'warmish' is not the right word for it. Not yet.

Flea circus

Something new last night: not a moth, but a power cut. I slumbered on, but Penny was woken at about 3am by a neighbour's burglar arm wailing away. We didn't have light, heat and the rest of it 'til midday when a portable generator arrived. That's still grumbling away just up the road as I write, just after 11pm, so consequently the mercury vapour lamp is shining again. As ever, I am optimistic because the forecast for tonight is for dry and even warmish weather at last.

It was cool last night and there were intermittent showers; plus, I didn't light the trap 'til after 10.30pm, so it was unsurprising to find very little there in the morning. Quite interesting, though. Look at these scenes on the golden background of the Happy Eggs eggbox. They bring to mind some episode of Star Wars, strange creatures on the desert planet of Tattouine.

Once again, I will have to fall back on Ben or Dave or one of my kindly experts to tell me what the tiny scrap of micromoth might be. The others are pugs, I am fairly sure, and I will work away at identifying them tomorrow morning. Sleep well.

Update: Charlie Streets kindly comes to my rescue in Comments.  The micro is Eriocranaria subpurpurella, which likes oaks, of which we have plenty hereabouts. I love acorns.  

Giglamps

The year's first Spectacle moth, showing off the reason for its name. Things are looking up, just like the moth. Warmer nights and a distant sense of summer. But the rain has come back during the course of today and there'll be no trapping tonight.

The Spectacle's markings have nothing to do with its actual eyes, but they may have developed through natural selection as a useful form of warning camouflage. The affection they prompt is a reminder of easily we sentimental humans can anthropomorphise animals. The Beatrix Potter syndrome. It's misleading in terms of how the natural world actually behaves and leads to much misunderstanding and gush. But this should be balanced by the way that animal stories lead many young people into taking a serious interest in Nature.

Enough philosophising; here is the other novelty in the trap last night. Very tiny indeed and I have no idea what it is. Update: Oh yes, I do, thanks to Dave Shenton (see Comments). It's one of the Ancylis micro-moths; he reckons A. badiana whose caterpillars eat pea leaves. 

Dryzabone

I have sung the praises of my Robinson moth trap many times, and especially the excellence of its spindly rain shield (above). This looks so ramshackle that newcomers to it such as Kevin Hill who did the PAT-testing on the trap before its excursion to the Guardian roof last month, couldn't believe that such things were legally on sale to the general public.

But they are; and so they should be, as last night demonstrated. I had turned the light on at about 8.30pm and was creeping to bed dog-tired when I heard the sound of steady, drumming rain. I was too far gone to do anything about this, and trusted Mr and Mrs Robinson's rain shield to do its job. It did. You can see from the raindrops on the cable and plastic cover who wet it was. But snug and dry inside were these two nice arrivals, both firsts for this year.

The one in the livid orange eggbox is a Twin Spot Carpet (I am fairly sure - but - update - I am wrong; it's a Spruce Carpet. See Comments for which I am really grateful) and the other on the green box is a Flame Carpet. They do not eat carpets and nor do their caterpillars. Their name comes from the late 18th century when their intricate patterns reminded entomologists of carpets at home, just as the Wainscot moths were named after wooden panelling.

When I was looking at the Flame Carpet, the sun caught the fringe of its hindwings and turned them into shining gold. I tried to capture this on camera without great success. But here is my effort anyway.

Gallery of the Dolls

These are hard times for the moth enthusiast. I have yet to read a scientific explanation for the long interregnum taking place between the early Spring moths, of which there have been plenty but are now few, and the appearance of the early summer ones, which has yet to happen. I presume that the unseasonal chill is keeping the latter snug in their cocoons. We must just be patient.

By contrast, moths, butterflies and caterpillars abounded at this year's Saltaire Arts Trail, an excellent annual event about which I have blogged unceasingly on the Guardian Northerner. Aren't these images spooky? They are the work of Yorkshire artist Emma Wilkinson who was wafting about in the Saltaire Bookshop where these were displayed.

"They talk to me sometimes," she told me, and there was a hint that they might fly out of their cabinets at night. It reminded me of an equally spooky Victorian poem where a moth shows a visitor round his collection of netted humans, pinned in display cases.

We catch them and kill them with poison 
It's ether - a very nice way 
Just look at this fellow 
His hair is so yellow 
And his eyes such a beautiful grey. 



Eeek! Thank goodness we just use digital cameras these days...

You can find out more about Emma here and here.

Eftsoons

This is a great moment for me, albeit not a mothy one. Ever since we came here in 1987, I have longed to share our home with a newt. We have a pond and many, many frogs; and I know that newts exist nearby. We used to catch them when I was a boy at Tile Lane ponds in Adel, where Prince Kropotkin taught Arthur Ransome to skate.

Great anarchist, great children's writer (and Guardian journalist); I'm sure they probably went newt-hunting too. Kropotkin used to stay with the very advanced socialists, the Miss Fords of Adel Grange, and Ransome's father was a prof at the fledgling Leeds university.

Anyway, I was altering the foundations of our done-in-a-day, Challenge Anneka, duck house (not claimed on expenses), when I saw what looked like a very small dragon. Strictly speaking, I think it's an eft, a very good Scrabble word which means young newt. It's my newt. Get it? I think it may be a Great Crested, judging by the leopardskin patterning on its belly and along its flanks.

My younger sister Tessa, very eagle-eyed, spotted this worm - right, detail from the second picture above - in the same chunk of soil which I carefully lifted on a trowel to ferry to my camera. Do newts eat worms? I will Google. I put it back carefully under a pile of stones by the pond, and the worm too. When I went and had a peep an hour so so later, both had gone. To a new sanctuary of their own choice, I hope.

I'm always forgetful about providing something for scale to help you to see how big or small the moths are - or the efts. This one is about two inches from head to the curl in its tail. Maybe the trowel, one of the narrow ones, gives the idea.

Blankety-blank

I was grumbling away this morning about the absence of moths in this chilly, dull weather when, as often happens, I got a pleasant last-minute surprise. On the edge of the third last egg box was perched this Lunar Marbled Brown, deeply asleep but showing only one side to my camera.

A late Spring moth at last! And a very handsome one, patterned like one of those high quality camping rugs they used to make at Witney Blankets in what is now David Cameron's constituency. My other blanket story involves an old family friend John Walker, sadly no longer with us, who was both head of a blanket-making company in the Spen Valley and chairman of the magistrates' bench in Dewsbury.

He chaired the hearing when Peter Sutcliffe, the 'Yorkshire Ripper', first appeared in court, and then went back to the mill where the atmosphere was tense. Sutcliffe's reign of terror was exactly that; I remember the widespread sense of fear before he was caught. But John defused things, as staff left their machines and crowded round for news, by saying: 'I'll tell you this first: the blanket he had over his head when they took him into court from the police van, was one of ours.'

Here's the Lunar Marble Brown again; above and below, for you to feast your eyes on its subtle colours. With luck, there should be more new and interesting arrivals in the trap as we get properly started on May. I am specially hoping for great things on the 18th. It's my birthday.

Grey and Ochre

As Ben observes with his characteristic wisdom in a comment on my last post, the transition from early- to mid-spring moths is slow this year, and I still find familiar faces, or at least species, in the trap. Here's a handsome Early Grey above, for example, and below one of the many, constantly baffling pugs.

I was given a special guide to these after addressing Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society on the subject of journalism a couple of years ago, but it hasn't really improved my ability to tell the subtle differences between these tiny creatures. Talking of connections between moths and journalism, the Guardian has so far rebuffed my attempts to interest them in the fabby coming guide to micro-moths (see previous post) but I will win in the end.

Here's the pug closer up. Now I will go and try to check it against my moth Bible. And also have my early morning cup of tea. Update: Having checked, I'm opting for an Ochreous Pug, and will now sit back and wait to be congratulated or, more probably, corrected.

Tiny beauty

A dry night at last, yippee! But a very cold one, and to begin with I wondered if the trap was completely empty. If you check back to Expert Ben's comment on the previous post, you'll see his interesting observation that moths seem to be more abundant on wet nights rather than on windy ones, in the current period of glum weather.

I always check very carefully, however. On many previous occasions, it has been the last or penultimate egg box which has concealed something really interesting. So it was this morning. On just one of the boxes was a tiny speck. Expanded by the technical wonders of my digital camera (micro mode, appropriately), it becomes this ravishing micro moth.

A grand dame on her way to the opera in some sort of lustrous leopardskin-patterned outfit with a matching fur? You tell me (you can click on the pics to enlarge them and get the full glamour).

The world of micros is a joy which I am looking forward to indulging as work winds down. Hey presto! On 31 May the long-awaited British Wildlife Publishing Field guide to Micro Moths will be published. Andrew Branson of BWP has just emailed me with this excellent news and he is not exaggerating when he says in his press release that the book, by the experts Phil Sterling and Mark Parsons and illustrated by the incomparable Richard Lewington,

"for the first time, makes this fascinating and important group of insects accessible to the general naturalist. it is one of the most eagerly anticipated insect guides for years."

Bring it on!  My birthday is on 18 May.

Update: I despair of my ability to identify creatures this size but Ben Sale - see comments - has come to my rescue. This is Eriocrania subpurpurella. Something to do with heads and colour, I think. I must brush up my Latin.

Rain, rain, go away

Things looked encouraging last night, with a largely clear evening and temperatures average for the time of year. But this morning the garden is glistening from the effects of overnight rain and the cold is back. Trees have been blown down in south western England and the forecast is wet, wet, wet.

This is good for the drought-stricken areas which now form a large triangle from east Yorkshire (but not us) down to Cornwall, but it isn't conducive to large arrivals of moths in the trap. There were five there this morning, three Common Quakers and two Hebrew Characters, including this rather finely-marked one.

Observe the Hebrew letter 'nun' which gives the moth its name, along with the accompanying legend that one of its ancestors was given the hereditary mark by the Almighty after it dared to address him, or her, direct. What would a moth say to God? What would you? It's one of those questions which make for a good supper table discussion, like the six people from history you'd most want to invite round for tea.

Moths in Darwin's town

I've been in Shrewsbury at the annual cartoon festival in my undeserved role as a patron of the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation. It's an excellent event and the town is a lovely place in which to play truant. Thanks to Lindsey Besley, whose husband Rupert is an ancient pal and outstanding cartoonist, we visited Shrewsbury Museum and saw these wonderful bed-hangings.

They are modern reproductions and therefore glow with colour in a manner which would long have faded from the 1593 originals. The patterns are based on Tudor work and, my goodness, entomology was big for 16th century seamstresses.  In Hamlet, it was flights of angels which sang the sweet prince to his rest. In Shakespeare's real-life world, it was clearly butterflies and moths.

I could fill the blog with this sort of thing. The museum also has a heart-shaped Butterfly Dish, so-called because of its lepidopterous pattern, and in a modern clothes boutique on our walk, there was a lovely party dress covered with butterflies. I wonder if they deter clothes moths (of which there are VERY few species, I must add. I do not want to give moths a bad name).

But I won't go on. Instead, for those who wonder about the hold which moths have on me,  I'll end with a letter described at the museum. As you can see, it starts: "I am dying by inches from not having anyone to talk to about insects." The author, who commendably uses every inch of his paper by cross-writing, was Charles Darwin.  

Sparkling water

There was a moth in the trap when I finally got round to investigating yesterday, and it was made more interesting by the rainfall. Although the shield is surprisingly effective (Kevin the electrician said: "They'd never be allowed to sell that" when he first saw it), a little bit of water usually gets inside after an hour or two.

Tucked under the one really damp eggbox was this Clouded Drab, whose dullness was banished by what looked like tiny diamonds on its dull-coloured wings. They were very small dots of moisture accumulated from its surroundings but held on the 'skin' of the scales in the same way that rain fails to penetrate the lanolin-protected fleece of sheep, such as those shown in yesterday's post.

The camera doesn't do the phenomenon justice and I'm afraid that my pictures get blurry in close-up. But here is a section of wing where I hope you can see the moisture it bit more obviously. I went down again an hour or so later and the moth had dried out. Shortly afterwards, it skittered off to a safer home inside a rhododendron bush.

Mint sauce, anyone?

There may be moths later today, after the recent shortage. I was woken by rain and so went out early to switch off the trap (Mr and Mrs Robinson's rain shield is simple in the extreme but extraordinarily effective). It was too dark to examine the eggboxes and take photos, so please be patient.

In the meanwhile, here are Martin's Lambs and Martin's Ducklings. Lovely what you find in Wharfedale on an April day. We did the circular walk between Burnsall and Thorpe, famed hamlet of maypole-stealers, passing the suspension bridge and stepping stones just after Postman's Steps.

The sheep with the yellow bucket on its head alarmed other townies out on the same walk and we promised to check with the chairman of Burnsall parish council who was manning Katie's tea cabin in Burnsall car park. Not to worry, he said, obviously used to such tender but unnecessary concern. "The farmers go out every hour so to check at lambing time."

We are moths!

My younger son Olly has come to my aid on another mothless day. Frost rimes the lawn for the second morning running and I don't feel disposed to trap. But he has been to the exhibition at the Hayward gallery on London's South Bank of the work of the comic artist David Shrigley. Comic, that is, in the sense that many good artists have been, by using fun in the work to make serious or interesting points.

Olly spotted and 'phone-photoed this exhibit, which reminds me of the local slogan 'We are Leeds!' which impressively loyal followers of Leeds United FC chant through thick and thin. I haven't had time to think, or Google, about why Shrigley composed this mothfest (and bear in mind that he is a trained artist, perfectly able to draw and paint accurately rather than simply with the verve of a primary school child). But has led me to a very good blog called Moths by the Way, which seems to have lived out its brief life much like a moth but is full of good things.

It in turn led me to this other combination of moth and Shrigley which you can actually get as a T-shirt although it's a bit too grey for my own fashion tastes.

Cupboard bare

I put the trap out lateish last night and woke up to a heavy frost. At the time of writing, 7.20am, the temperature is struggling to get above 0C, 32F, although that hasn't deterred two cock robins from having an energetic face-off over breadcrumbs we scattered yesterday on the lawn. The trap is completely empty, something which has only happened once before in four years, and the other time was on a snowy night in December. So I shall mark this with a small first: a blog post without a photo.

Mind you, the sky is clear and the sun is up, so we look set for a lovely day and probably a circular walk from a pub in the Dales. I hope you have something equally enjoyable in mind.

Back in business

Sorry, it's been a while. Not for any particular reason; just the iffy weather and a certain amount of boredom setting in with Common Quakers et al. I would never make a scientist, as the Oxford & Cambridge O Level Examination Board discerned many years ago. I ought to be trapping nightly and keeping numerical records. But I'm not and never will.

This morning was handy, though. A cold night with a bit of drizzle meant that the eggboxes had few residents and those which were there proved interesting. Or at least photogenic. Above is a very nice Early Grey, a moth whose complex pattern must surely have inspired designers in times past. I have made all the jokes about the almost eponymous tea in previous posts, so please take them as read.

Below are a couple of Northern Drabs much resembling students after a late night out. Interesting to see their fluffy bodies and, in the little picture on the right, the curious ear-like structures behind the antennae of one of them. I shall delve further, and almost quite scientifically, into that.


 

Meanwhile the natural world has provided us with one of its many small, everyday tragedies. We have Goldcrests here which are a constant delight, but I fear that disaster has overtaken one of their nests. I was clearing away a fallen branch from a big cedar when I saw a nest with one egg in. Another lay on the floor below. I put both back and hid the nest as best I could, although it with little hope that its owners would return. But at breakfast this morning, Penny noticed a Goldcrest pecking away at the place where the nest was hidden and flying too and fro, to much higher branches of the cedar, with beakfuls of grass and moss. Later two larger Blue Tits arrived and started doing the same.

 

I don't know if the nest was the Goldcrests' or the tits' but someone more knowledgeable than me may be able to tell from this photo of the egg.  Meanwhile, here is a picture we took of one of the Goldcrests years ago, after our older son Tom - not at the time specially interested in Nature - shouted from his bedroom: "Come and see this weird bird!"



It was a cock Goldcrest angrily displaying at its own reflection in Tom's window.  We watched it for ages, fascinated, as it could only see the reflection unlike the true believer in George Herbert's famous lines:

 A man that looks on glass, 
On it may stay his eye; 
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass, 
And then the heaven espy. 

Or the Wainwright family.