A false - but handsome - Admiral

Back to France today for another butterfly, but there are some moths here too.  The butterfly, below, is one which first deceived me five or so years ago when I thought I had seen a White Admiral at a cottage near the southern end of the Pyrenees.

I've always loved the WA with its simple but handsome uniform of black and white, with the black turning out to be streaked and tinted with iridescent petrel blue when caught by the sun. But when I followed the butterfly, whose powerful flight also seemed characteristic of an Admiral, it turned out to have a completely different underwing as in the picture below.

This looks like a Grayling, that clever butterfly which reinforces its camouflage by tilting at rest so that it casts the minimum shadow. And so it was, and in the case of the one show here from Tarn ten days ago, so it is: the Great Banded Grayling, which has the extra appeal of a butterfly not found in the UK. There were plenty of them around this year, but catching one with its wings open was tricky since they almost always fold them as soon as coming to rest. The one at the top obliged, briefly, and for once I was in time.

Moths now, and here is a series of arrivals in the last couple of days, led by the lovely Buff Arches whose wing patterns are so reminiscent of those swirling patterns which they do for you on a Flat White at Costa Coffee. Thinking of that pale, creamy froth, we then have a delicate Common Wave, a Marbled Minor and a chiaroscuro couple of arches, Dark and Grey. That's it for now, because I must get on with packing presents for Penny's birthday weekend...

Downton abbey?

Two nights of trapping running - a miracle in current weather conditions - and the lamp had the air of a TV costume drama this morning. Here on the rain shield, above, is an apparently dead drunk Common Footman, while below is a Gothic, a lovely moth whose patterns resemble the tracery of a window in a stately National Trust pile. I've added a second footman on the right, because he or she looks rather readier for carrying out domestic duties.

Meanwhile, I can't resist a couple more glories from our week near Albi: both of Europe's major swallowtails turned up, the Scarce and the straightforward version. Each was a bit battered-about with the Scarce missing its tails and the 'ordinary' Swallowtail flying tattered bits of forewing like a battleflag. Their grand, powerful and swooping flight was still a delight to behold.

Some moths!

There are plenty more butterflies to come from my week in France, but here's a little return to the world of Yorkshire moths. We had supper last night with a friend who had come up for the Great Yorkshire Show which has, alas, been wrecked by our weird and wayward bouts of sudden torrential rain. The evening itself was dry and even warm, though we could see the mudbath carparks of the showground in the distance; and on the way home, the car's headlights picked up many moths.

Out went the trap and the night stayed dry, so this morning there were at least 100 sleepers in the eggboxes. The majority were Dark Arches, Hearts and Darts and a whole flight of dainty Light Emeralds. But there were other interesting arrivals and a couple are here. The first is, I think, a Light Arches which makes a pleasant change, and the second maybe one of the Mochas.

I have to make an early start for work, so will do more research on my return. Meanwhile, in the hope that it casts a magic spell on the weather - which this morning is at least clear and even sunny - here is another fritillary pic from France which seems to me to sum up those drowsy, lovely seven days.

Update: thanks to David - see Comments - I can proceed straight to supper without research. This is a Tawny-barred Angle. This and the Light Arches are both classified as common by Waring, Townsend and Levington but both are new to my list here. So a good night all round

Sing the blues

On with the butterflies of Tarn - and please don't feel that you are missing any moths. It's very far from trapping weather here as you may have seen on the news. Over the moors in Hebden Bridge, they're busy clearing more than 500 tonnes of debris which cascaded down into the town as roads turned into waterfalls after getting the whole of July's average rain in three hours.

Happier matters: I often go on about the absence of blue in moths. That doesn't apply to butterflies as I hope these little jewels show. France has an impressive number of Blues but I am fairly sure that the first three pictures here are of the Common one which is also widely found in the UK, although very seldom in my part of Leeds. Here is an in-your-face, all-blue male, a beautifully subtle female and the male's underwing.

The next two pictures are not examples of brilliant photography, but I'm including them for the record. The first is another female, I think of a different type of blue because it was browner and smaller, and the second a paparazzi-style snatch shot of a Holly Blue-type with a powder blue underwing, which refused to come nearer to me than the top of a bramble-infested hedge. Can you spot it?

The blues belong to Lycaena family, which takes its name from the Greek word λικαενα which means a she-wolf. Why? I'm afraid the namer, William Elford Leach, died in 1836 but even if he were still here, I doubt he'd tell you. He named nine other insects after a woman called Caroline, some using her name and others composed of anagrams of it. But he never let on who she was. He also named no fewer than 29 after a friend of his called Mr Cranch.


I'm just going to end with another picture of that beautiful female Common Blue. Who needs Caroline?

Russet-coated captains

The greatest glory of last week's butterflies in France, for me, was the abundance of fritillaries. I have always loved these, possibly because of the coincidence between my youthful adventures with my net coincided with the excitement I felt in history lessons.

The aristocrats of the butterfly world in Britain were obvious: the Purple Emperor and Camberwell Beauty among the impossibly rare, and the Peacock, Red Admiral and Painted Lady among the blessedly frequent. All gaudy and magnificent, but not my favourites, any more than the Meadow and Hedge Browns and Small Heaths, which resembled the put-upon and multitudinous mediaeval peasantry.

The fritillaries were different. For me, they were like the fledgling democrats whose rise we followed under the guidance of Hugh Trevor-Roper and Wallace Notestein, whose brief but invaluable lecture The Winning of the Initiative by the House of Commons secured me my necessary A level grade, I'm convinced. It's much harder in the age of Google, but if you can find a rare piece of work like this which few rivals are likely to track down, young readers, that's a handy tip for exam technique.

There was also Cromwell, as quoted by Clarendon in his History of the Great Rebellion, speaking appositely of how: 

I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else.

But back to butterflies...  I am in danger of falling into my notorious mothy confusion, because fritillaries can be very similar, but I think that we have here in the order shown: Silver-washed, High Brown (over and then underwing), Spotted, Marble, Niobe and finally the relatively humble Knapweed which lacks the bright foxy, russet tone. But I will look further later, after work which resumes today.


This is my 600th post. Good heavens. 

The case of the tame Silver-washed

Sorry to my moth friends, but this begins a week of butterfly posts. We have just been in France, on the borders of the departments Tarn and Tarn-et-Garonne, and there were more than 30 different species in the garden of our rented cottage alone.

Bliss! And it's an area (some 20 miles west of Albi near exquisite little hilltop towns such as Castelneau de Montmiral) which I can't recommend too highly for a quiet but interesting break in the somnolent green depths of France's rural South West. If this was England, every little gem would be full of visitors. As it was, we were sometimes alone, or accompanied only by such interesting travellers as a Belgian family who were making their way through the area with a donkey like Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cevennes.

As you can see, the butterflies included almost tame French specimens of the Silver-washed Fritillary, a glory I remember from visits to the New Forest but can only dream of in Leeds. One frequented a postcard shop at Cordes-sur-Ciel, the other came to examine Penny while she was cooking. And to show that I haven't forgotten the moths, here is a film of a Humming-bird Hawk. There were three or four of them on the lavender outside our front door almost all the time we were there.

There is a fascinating plaque in Castelnau btw, quoting Simone de Beauvoir on her arrival there with Jean-Paul Sartre and the calming effect which the beautiful, arcaded central square had on his delusion at the time that he was being pursued by giant lobsters.  No sign of the Lobster Moth, alas, but then I didn't have my light trap.

Underneath the Arches

I've been muttering about looking at the Arches family and here we are at last. I suspect that it's largely because this one, above, was sprawled on its back like a drunk and so justified my atrociously punning headline. But in a very poor season for moth numbers so far, they are at least here in force.

The main thing that intrigues me about them, apart from the handsome size and patterning which includes the arch-like features which account for their name (above), is the variety of colour and tone. These below are all Dark Arches (I think and hope...) but initially when you look into the trap, you wonder if some of them are something else.

This is the case with very large numbers of UK moths, adding to the muddle and confusion which I already, notoriously, experience in trying to decide what's what. Look at these Hearts and Darts just below, as another example.  And then I think we'll conclude with some current arrivals which even I can identify: a Snout (what a nose!) - but, update, see Comments and ponder the story of Pinocchio; not that I make my mistakes deliberately. But this is a Fan Foot, a species becoming rarer in the north according to UK Moths, contrary to the general trend. Many thanks to Dave and Ray) -  a Brimstone and a Small Angle Shades with its lovely, just perceptible hint of that very rare moth colour, blue.

Pseudo-science, or the case of the Greens' Little Helpers

This morning's pictures illustrate what I shall grandly call the Empirical Fallacy. They appear to suggest that if you are a green moth, you get a small attendant to look after your daily needs. Certainly, a Martian exploring last night might have come to the conclusion that this applied to all Earth's curious, winged inhabitants. But as we know, neither proposition is true, any more than my boyhood conviction that Martians are also green.

The solution is to make sure not to draw conclusions from observations until you have a good number of the latter, and to take other precautions such as pondering other reasons for these quaint duos. But that's enough pseudo-science. Enjoyment is every bit as important; and I hope that these pictures of the year's first Light Emerald, which fluttered out of the trap but luckily hid on a window, and a Green Oak Roller or Tortrix micro, are enjoyable.

Pink and plump

Please forgive a little diversion from my planned observations on the Arches family. Who can resist the mighty hawk moths? They are far and away the biggest of the UK's species, entirely in a class of their own.

And look! The warm nights (still with a sting in the tail from morning rain though) have brought in these two peaches: a Poplar Hawk showing her pink slip and an Elephant Hawk revealing her (or possibly his) pink all.

We have also had the Eyed Hawk and Lime Hawk here, as well as the brown version of the latter, but they are less common. The Poplar and the Elephant are old but very beautiful reliables.

Green, green, green

Well, well. We've had an almost perfect June night, apart from a little rain just as I was making the early morning tea. Moth numbers remain modest even so, but I have a few to show off; indeed, enough to divide between several posts.

I was going to major on the Arches family, handsome insects which have started to arrive in force, but instead I am giving the whole space over today to just one of them: the Green Arches, a magnificent moth, whose colouring is both stunning and subtle.

Here it is, helpfully choosing a green eggbox to show its own greenery to best advantage. A green moth in a green shade, to twist the words of Andrew Marvell's lovely poem The Garden. Plus a bit of pink on its skirt hem and stripy stockings. And here it is close-up, below. Oh bliss.

Dots in a name

One of my favourite summer moths has defied the continuing miserable weather (cold when not raining, wet when warm). Here it is: the Single-dotted Wave, which I like on account of its inappropriate name.



If you screw your eyes up, maybe the smudge becomes a single dot. But otherwise the little creature is covered with them. It also has an endearingly finicky diet. In captivity, says my Moth Bible, the caterpillars 'will eat dandelion, preferring withered leaves.'



Well we have plenty of dandelions, both withered and plump. What we don't have is plenty of moths. This morning, there were six Heart and Darts, two Yellow Underwings (one of them shown above with a nice Dark Arches and a slug trail), a Freyer's Pug (below - am I right expert commentors?) and a couple of carpets. Not empty, but not great for a night in June.

Rain, rain go away

Back with the tiddlers today because rain has returned overnight, so it's backlog time. I settled back in an armchair last night with my new micro-moth Bible to identify the little creature above, fell asleep, woke up and had another go and then fell asleep again. The result of this endeavour means that I think that it's a Carnation Tortrix. We do have carnations in the garden, or Pinks as I prefer to call them. I hope I've got this one correct.


Secondly, here's a delicate little Carpet; either a Spruce or another Grey Pine, the latter introduced to me only last week by Samuel Miller and David Shenton, kindly and expert commentors. I shall opt for it. The forecast isn't good for the next few nights, but we'll see. Ironically we are in the high summer season of longest days and shortest nights. Could someone tell the weather gods (or fiends)?

You can make both the pictures bigger by clicking on them.