Marvellous indeed

One of the stars of my moth year has arrived, dead on cue: the beautifully-named Merveille du Jour which is also a delightfully coloured and patterned moth.  I spotted two of them clinging to eggbox cones when I went to get the trap; the third was tucked in another eggbox lower down. I never had them in Leeds, although a friend played host to them regularly in Scarborough. But here in Oxfordshire they have come every year, always in early mid-October.

I too some initial pictures which were enlivened by an ichneumon wasp, whose pose with one of the Merveilles resembled, in may mind at least, a couple of the negotiators of the UK's shambolic 'brexit' (an ugly word for an act of wondrous stupidity; let's hope that realities bring enough people to their senses to prevent it happening).

The ichneumon wasp was particularly appropriate. They are horrid creatures, at least to the kindly human eye, because they lay eggs in caterpillars which hatch into larvae which eat their host alive. Even as a boy, I nursed a great dislike of them and I remember that when a butterfly commentatot called L.Hugh Newman seemed to be omnipresent and frequently off-beam in his observations, my father and I renamed him 'Ich-Newman'.

Anyway, back to the happier subject of the Merveilles.  During the phoyo session, I noticed that the leaf colours of a nearby lungwort, or pulmonaria, were very similar to the moths. Hoping that the trio would be sleepy enough not to object, I decanted them on to a couple of leaves. The result is the picture at the top of the post.

My other source of happiness at the moment is the number of Red Admiral butterflies about - can you see all four in the picture of ivy surrounding an upturned wheelbarrow?  There was a rather gloomy item about butterfly numbers in 2016 on Radio 4's Today programme yesterday, but the expert did at least acknowledge that Red Admirals are currently flying and basking on walls and plants in good numbers. I hope that you get to see some too.

Churchwardens

One of our churchwardens contacted me this week to say that he had found two creatures in the church tower which he thought might be moths. He was right. This intimate pair are Heralds, moths of great distinction because they adorn the spine of the UK moth Bible on which I depend for my - often still shaky - identifications. 

The churchwarden in question is a great devotee of Hoovering and had recently borrowed a huge industrial machine to suck all the detritus acquired since the early 19th century out of the building. I am glad that I was able to save these two innocent and interesting moths from his zeal for a temple with totally polished corners.

Meanwhile, I have treated myself to these seeds - Nicotiana or Tobacco Plants, after a string of accounts on the Upper Thames Moths blog from people who grew these plants this year and as a result, attracted Convolvulus Hawk moths.  The species' fondness for the plants, and its apparent ability to detect their presence from considerable distances (like the lusty male Emperor moths which I have written about here before) is one of the remarkable features of the mothy world.

I hope that the result of my investment will mirror the name of the variety - Sensation. Meanwhile, here is another feature of the Convolvulus Hawk, courtesy of the Alamy picture agency: the tongue or proboscis which enables it to extract nectar from Tobacco plants is so long that it has its own casing in the pupa.

Wing and a Prayer

Today's moth is just one of dozens of Black Rustics which are flitting about the garden at this time of year, but as you can see, it is one with a difference. Something - a bird or bat attack or collision with twigs or brambles - has removed large sections of wing scales.

The incident doesn't, however, appear to have damaged the actual wing 'fabric' which shows clearly through on the picture, foggily translucent like the paper we used to stick on to our balsa wood kit planes long ago. It also didn't affect the airworthiness of the moth which flew away after our photographic session, as powerfully as any of its fellows in better condition.

The episode reminded me of pictures of battered wartime 'planes whose ability to survive serious damage led to the writing of the famous song 'Comin' in on a Wing and a Prayer'. It's worth spending a moment reading the background to this here, on an excellent web-page from which my other photographs are taken, including the relevant squadron's subsequent emblem. below. Only shame is, the artist didn't use a moth.

The future (past and present) are ALL orange

Autumn's continuing blaze of orange and yellow, courtesy of the Sallow family of moths, reminds me of a spectacular event in Worcester in the winter of 2013/14, based on...MOTHS!

The county and city councils' noble and imaginative museum service had the brilliant idea of using the insects to create a spectacular story for parades and tableaux in the city's streets, designed to widen interest in the rich collections (including of moths, but very many other things besides). 

It subtly used the word 'MOTH' as its acronym, short for Museums on the High Street, and you can see from my pictures, taken from an excellent commemorative booklet, that the High Street was a pretty amazing place to be.  The parades and associated events were woven round the story of a Victorian woman entomologist (quite a numerous breed in real life, with characters like Margaret Fountaine and Mary de la Beche Nicholl) and her adventures with giant moths. Lady and moth are shown inset, left.

Back in my garden, the lovely Barred Sallow shown at the top of this post and just below was joined by the other that species two colour forms, by a Pink-Barred Sallow and a different variety of the plain Sallow from the one which came two nights ago. You may be wondering about the apparent misnomer 'sallow' which in humans denotes an unhealthy appearance. The Sallow moths look anything but unhealthy; the name refers to the food plant which most of them enjoy.

The trap also produced this year's first Green-brindled Crescents, a lovely early Autumn moth with vivid flecks of metallic green among its otherwise sober (but intriguingly patterned) wing scales.

Also snoozing peacefully: an Angle Shades, a Deep-brown Dart (the companion moth to all the Black Rustics about at the moment) and a Beaded Chestnut (I think, though this sort of moth invariably muddles me). Update: as it has this time. The final moth is a Brown-spot Pinion. Many thanks to Richard in Comments.

Autumn orange

It's easy to think, at this time of the year, that all the glories of the UK's moth realm are past and that little apart from a gradual wind-down remains before the effective end of the season in November. At least I find it so. Luckily, I took a post-holiday peek yesterday at the excellent Upper Thames Moths blog and was reminded how much beauty - and surprise - can come the moth-trappers' way in early to mid-Autumn.

Galvanised by this into lighting the trap last night, I was rewarded this morning by three lovely members of the 'oranges and lemons' Sallow family: the Barred Sallow at the top of this post, the Pink-barred Sallow in my second picture and the simple Sallow itself, below.

The Lunar Underwing is around in great numbers and all three of its colourways; here are a a grey one and a beige one below. Just the tawny one missing.

Then I think we have a trio of Beaded Chestnuts, although I get a bit unreliable with this sort of moth:

And finally, by far the most common moth in the trap at the moment is the stylish Black Rustic. A Darth Vader among moths, the species also has the habit of settling down on walls or foliage up to ten yards away from the trap. here are two which have found little niches in one of our house's rather primitive-looking walls.

Holiday moths

Sorry for the silence here but I've been away on holiday - a working holiday as Penny and I were there as Useful Grandparents. We had a week on Skiathos which we last visited 33 years ago. It's changed, inevitably, but the lovely beaches round Koukounaries have not been spoiled and the interior of the island is still mysterious and very green.

Very Riband Wavy

This looks like a Portland Riband Wave; very rare in the UK but widespread on the Continent

My moth investigations, encouraged as ever by our granddaughter, were mostly focussed on a number of outside lights fixed on whitewashed walls, which produced a handful of doing overnighters every morning. None of them are exactly riveting and the last one, above, is the good old Silver Y, star of this year's European Cup football final.  The best moth was scooting around by day - the Hummingbird Hawk shown in my first picture.

This is very like our micro Endotricha flammealis

Mmmmm....

A Wainscot of some kind?

A Garden Pebble methinks, or Continental relative thereof - with an ant providing a handy scale

I have never seen one of these at rest, apart from one in our greenhouse a couple of years ago which was not merely at rest but at Eternal Rest, hence its immobility. They are desperately hard to photograph, at least for an amateur like me. I just pointed the camera at the jasmine on which the moth was nectaring and clicked and clicked.

At least one picture wasn't too bad; and while Hummingbird-hunting, I cam across the pretty moth above, resting quietly on a leaf.  It has the look of a faded Continental relative of our Bloodvein. I'm also pleased with these butterfly pics below: a Lang's Short-tailed Blue, underside and top-wings, and a Painted Lady.

Other butterflies included the Small Copper below and a Wall whose wings on a beautiful day of glaring, hot sunshine did very funny things to my digital image.

And here are some Geranium Bronzes, a species so prolific on Skiathos that they rise like little scraps of flower petal as you brush through the maquis. This butterfly is that rarity, a new British species. First arriving in a nursery's consignment of geraniums from Spain or Portugal in 1997, it is now on the UK list although its ability to survive our winters is uncertain.

Finally, a 'looper' caterpillar which was spinning its way down from the jasmine when I interrupted its progress for a photograph. I tried to snap it in dangling situ but it never stopped oscillating from side to side, either because of the sea breezes or due to its mighty hauling and spinning efforts.