An old friend

I wasn't expecting much in the way of butterflies on the Hebridean island of Colonsay, where P and I are having a week with family. Nor of the weather. But in both respects my pessimism has been happily confounded. Blessed with five days of sunny weather so far (double the entire summer's total as of last week according to one of the very friendly islanders), I have also encountered an unexpected and very old friend.

This is the Dark Green Fritillary butterfly, which swoops aristocratically around the marram grass of the coastal dunes and the grassy banks rich in small wildflowers  thrift, thyme, harebells and tormentil - which lie behind. It was in just such conditions that I captured the rarest butterfly in my small collection (dating from the time when cameras were hopeless and small boys such as myself went out with nets).

I noticed that one of half-a-dozen fritillaries which I had caught differed strikingly from the others, with broad slashes of silver on its lower underwings. It proved to be the rare variety Charlotta which  

was once considered to be a separate species and briefly rejoiced in the name of Queen Charlotte's Fritillary. You can read more here.



Here are the underwings of the standard Dark Green Fritillary and Charlotta. The difference is fairly dramatic, I think you will agree.



And here are the top wings with Charlotta showing the 'keyhole' pattern near the wing edge.



I wasn't so amazingly lucky this time but I did have luck nonetheless. On our second last day, I was hoping to get a good picture of the fritillary to match my sister Tessa's - yes she and many others are with us here - of the beautiful orangey male above. But it was very windy and by 2pm I'd not seen butterflies of any kind. Then, while waving at some of the others from a marram dune, I caught a slight movement right by my feet out of the corner of my eye. It was the female shown in the first two pictures, so hunkered down because of the wind that I was able to photograph her from very close-to.

Apologies for now for the quality of my pics but my camera will not connect to the iPad - or at least I haven't yet found out how to entice it to - so these are iPad photos of the camera's playback screen.

While on IT skills, this post is kind-of historic as the first I have ever written, illustrated and published while away from base.

Hooray!

Quartet

There are not very many moths which rest with their wings in the steeply angled posture of the one above. So I am pretty confident, as I come to examine the four arrivals shown today, that this is a Treble-bar. Not that life is ever simple. There is also a Lesser Treble-bar and a Purple Treble-bar, which are annoyingly similar, and also a Manchester Treble-bar which is a favourite of mine.  This is because it flies the flag of Manchester in the mothy world, a role it once shared as I describe - forgive the plug - in my book True North:

A textile worker called Robert

Cribb, did the city a good turn in 1829 by discovering an insect now

known as the Manchester moth on Kersal Moor in central Salford, a

wildish, Hampstead Heath-like green lung. He captured some 50 of

the yellow and brown species, scientifically known as Schiffermulleria

woodiella, but got into an argument over rent with his landlady, who

burned his insect collection. Only three Manchester moths were

salvaged but as none has ever been caught since, this has given the

species the distinction of being among the rarest moths in the world.

When the story was retold at a meeting of the Royal Entomological

Society in Manchester in 1951, a Manchester Guardian leader noted:

‘We are not cotton-spinners all, sang Tennyson. But he might have

been a bit more respectful about these parts if he had known about our eminent moth"

Meanwhile, back down South, here is a nice little Carpet, I think a Red Twin-spot, and below a Bright-line Brown-eye.

But what is this, creeping modestly into a nook?  Could it be our well-named friend, the Uncertain Moth? Answers warmly welcomed, as usual.

With the best will in the world...

Today's post is a second instalment of 'storage' - moths for definite identification when things calm down and mornings are darker and less conducive to pre-tea inspections of the trap.

The last one was for micro-moths. This is for those annoying (to me) macros which come in over-similar shapes, sizes and colours.

Here's my thumb, above, as a size reminder although the eggbox cone sorts things out for me, as one of the world's leading authorities on containers for eggs.  Meanwhile, I think the battered visitor below is another Red Twin-spot Carpet. But you (or at least I) never know.

Liliput

I once had the great pleasure of being paid by the BBC to wander around Utah and the picture above reminded me of the state's striking landscape. If the tiny pug moth featured was a giant, it would be folding its wings round one of the butte rock formations, which are often made more fascinating still by the relics of native Americans.

I have not yet had time to try to identify the pug and that also applies to the other Lilputians shown here. I hope you will forgive a very selfish post. This series is a storage box for me to sort out at the end of the season - or possibly sooner with the help of my much-appreciated commentors.

Having said that, I'm always extremely grateful for advice from passing experts and can never say Thankyou enough to those who give their time to put me right. I am sorry no to reciprocate more, but I don't think that many people would benefit from my stabs in the mothy dark.

I'm specially interested in the little chap above which may be a macro moth in spite of its diminutive size. I'm also looking forward to doing an audit, come October, and seeing if the eggbox number below is more or less than my total of micro-moths since we moved from Leeds to near Oxford.

Pretty parade

The life of a moth enthusiast at this time of year can be a little becalmed amid grey and brown arrivals, as is the case at the start of the season back in March. Today's offerings are some of the exceptions: bright pieces of colour or lightness  which cheer me up as I sift through the eggboxes of a morning.

The Brimstone moth, above, is as welcome as its sulphurous namesake among our butterflies and as generously-brooded. Examples have been coming all summer.  The Green Carpet below is battered but still a worthy representative of its infrequent colouring among moths. Even when you get green species, notably the various Emeralds, they are prone to fading very fast.

The Clouded Border below is a dainty creature with a distinctive play on the sort of black and white camouflage which we've seen here recently with the starry Black Arches.

And let's hear it finally for this Riband Wave. I have often shown this Laura Ashley species and there's nothing special about this one. Except that it has posed on a division between two soft, pastelly colours which looks pleasant in a Farrow and Ball sort of way.

Sunshine

Yesterday I mentioned the excellent Mikron Theatre's forthcoming production about the Canary Girls, women munition workers whose skin was turned yellow by the unpleasant chemicals they handled. This morning, I found the Canary-shouldered Thorn in the trap again and got a rather more yellow shot than the one I used last week. A very pleasant yellow, unlike that suffered by the women workers.

A dose of sunshine, indeed. And from yellow to Copper, although it is very hard to goad the Copper Underwing (or possibly Svensson's Copper Underwing - the differences are too hard for an amateur such as myself to detect) to show the bright underwings which give the species its name. I rely on thos two little eyes on the wings for my ID of this excellent and very vigorous moth, which zooms around the eggboxes if at all disturbed. This is my first of 2015.

The pretty little micro Anania coronata paid a call as well, along with this very worn macro below - at least I think it's a macro - whose ID is made harder by my inept camerawork. I've not yet learned how the Lumix handles abrupt contrasts between light and shade.  But I will persevere, as ever.

Yum yum

Penny and I have had the good fortune this summer to see both the plays in this season's repertoire of Mikron, the enterprising theatre company from Marsden, near Huddersfield, which performs in pub gardens and travels round the country on a narrowboat.  I recommend them hugely if you are anywhere near any of their venues. Their practice is to take an intersting piece of social history - this year, the Women's Institute for one play and Fish and Chips for the other - and describe it through a strange, witty and musical plot.

They come to mind because next year their subjects will be the 'canary girls', women whose work making munitions turned their skin yellow (and did much worse things to their health), and by contrast, the history of chocolate. I wonder if they will include one of the arrivals in my eggboxes: the Chocolate-tip moth?

Beloved of me, because it is so simple to identify, this is a very welcome regular in the trap. I have tried to capture the brightness of the crimson on its chocolatey tip. Like one of those strawberry whirls or whatever which combine two delicious tastes.

Death in the Greenhouse

We had guests the other day and a rather comprehensive clear-up in advance of their arrival. This included our greenhouse/conservatory and you can see one of the consequences above. This sad little graveyard was originally scattered around under various chairs and tables. The presence of a decomposed Orange Tip, a butterfly not on the wing for a couple of months almost, shows how long it is since I last trundled around among the pot plants with a Hoover.

I guess the heat and lack of nectaring plants does for them. Although cool at night, it's noteworthy how very hot any glazed building in the UK can become after only a short period of direct sunlight. When I was a young journalist living in a rented flat and thrifty with the heating, I decided that the best two ways of warming up were visiting the local botanical gardens greenhouses and/or enrolling in a life drawing class.

Having said that, the little Carnation Tortrix, Cacoecimorpha pronubana, absolutely thrives in our greenhouse. I always disturb a few when I potter about in there during the summer months. Maybe other species will become hardier if our summers continue as benign as this one is proving. I was certainly encouraged - and cheered up in a traffic jam - by seeing this blaze of Oleander in London's Lea Bridge Road on a granddaughter-tending visit. I thought these were strictly greenhouse plants. Maybe my lifelong dream of seeing an Oleander Hawk moth in the UK will come true one day.

Wains and Scotts

As of the wee small hours on Monday, as Mrs Thatcher might have put it: "We are a Grand-Uncle". A lovely little girl has been born to the middle one of my three lovely and interesting nieces. When I think of them, I think of the family of moths featured today, the Wainscots, because the combination of their parents' names, Wainwright and Scott, shrinks nicely into this joint word.

Having said that, I get into a worse muddle than usual over the Wainscots whose markings are only subtly different and are confused by variations within each species. The easy way, for me, is to say that all the ones I find are Common Wainscots which come in both the white and beige-pinky forms shown above. But I've also had their relatives the Smoky Wainscot and the Shoulder-striped and I wonder if the one below is one of these? 

I remember the relative joy of getting a Large Wainscot last year, because they live up to their name. Meanwhile here is a picture of our wain, melting Dali-like into the paving, which I carefully repair every year. And to the right, a picture of the Scott Sociable motorbike and sidecar; just the thing for a young couple with a small babe.  And made in Shipley, where the little one's grandparents live.

Blushing pink

I was a bit over-hasty in relegating the Black Arches to a secondary position behind the Marbled Beauty and Marbled Green yesterday. This was because I wasn't aware of its hidden glories - soft grey underwings and a staggering pink body.

I should have known. The pink is mentioned in the Moth Bible, but as so often in years gone by, I was not paying attention in class. My lucky break came late yesterday afternoon when I took in the moth trap from the rain and noticed that the Black Arches which had come overnight was still there. The crucial difference from the morning was that something, perhaps the rain, had persuaded it to reveal a little of its underwings, like a nightie.  When I shifted the box, it slid them open a little more and the pink blazed out.

Can pink blaze? Well it did for me. It was such an unexpected contrast to the white-and-black forewings and the grey below.  I coaxed the poor insect to open its wings wider until it lost patience and flew off. But it was sleepy and made progress like a student with a hangover. I tracked it down and persuaded it on to a holly leaf.

This allowed me to take the top picture, showing the pink abdomen from below. A lovely moth indeed. I hereby promote it back to equal ranking with the Marbleds.

Nice to have you back

Last month I enjoyed an excellent night when a Marbled Green and a Marbled Beauty arrived together. Now one of them has paid me a return visit; the Marbled Beauty above. A Spectacle Moth is kindly providing scale in place of my usual chubby fingers or thumb. The patterning of both the Marbled cousins is lovely, especially for its subtlety. Yesterday's Black Arches is also a favourite of mine with its op-art Bridget Riley treatment of black and white. Another of them came last night, snuggling up to a Common or Lesser Common Rustic to deny my fingers their day in the limelight again. But the Marbleds are in a different, subtler class.

Here he or she is again, closer up, above. Instead of a Marbled Green, I discovered as I went through the eggboxes, there was a second Marbled Beauty tucked away - picture below. See how the patterning is slightly different, but just as effective in terms of camouflage defence against birds.

A third moth in the trap also appeals to me, although it has appeared on the blog at regular intervals. I still get a kick of its peculiar shape, like a counter in a board game or, more appropriately, a piece of bird poo which a hunting sparrow or blackbird might ignore.  This is the Chinese Character moth. No other in the UK rests in anything resembling that position, so even I always know what it is.

Humming along

It was an excellent moth day yesterday although I failed to get a picture of a very agreeable visitor, a Hummingbird Hawk moth. I was pottering in the garden in bright and very warm sunshine when it appeared on a pink phlox, zooming around and nectaring as if there was no tomorrow.

I felt in my belt pouch and, curses, there was no camera. I had put it on charge just before wandering out. I nipped inside but, unlike the miracle of the Brown Argus failing-battery photo last week, i wasn't lucky this time. The hummer was still there when I got back but only for a few seconds. It didn't return and, as a busy little migrant from warmer lands, I don't expect it to. it will be foraging adventurously somewhere else.

My top picture therefore comes from the archive. I took it on Paxos in 2010. Happy memories. But there was plenty of solace in the moth trap on the next - Saturday/Sunday - night. Deep in an eggbox cone was the lovely Black Arches with its magnificent antennae in my second and third photos. And sitting on the hydrangea just above the trap was the handsome Canary-shouldered Thorn below.