Small Big and Big Small

After so many years of writing these posts, I take a lot for granted. One example is my casual use of 'micro' and 'macro' in describing moths, as if everyone chancing on this blog understood the difference. In terms of the first term meaning 'small' and the second 'big', you probably do. But it is interesting to remind myself, as well as to tell anyone who hasn't the foggiest about the subject, that the division often doesn't make sense in size terms and - more surprisingly - that it has no absolute scientific basis.

Today's moths prove the first point. My top-of-the-lister is a macro moth, the Short-cloaked whose name derives from the way in which it appears to be neatly and fashionably clothed. (You might argue that it could also be called the Moustached, but the cloak won out). Yet it is a tiny creature as my helpful thumb shows. Much smaller than this pair of micros - Small Magpies - below.

The point about science meanwhile has wider interest, especially during the pandemic when governments are trying to 'follow the science'.  So they should, but as any scientist will tell them and you, science is not a neat set of rules. New discoveries and interpretations are always coming along and changing our understanding - and that is obviously, especially the case with a new disease.

Here are three micros, while we are on the subject, and you can see how different they all are. In general, though, they have more primitive body parts than macro moths. But again, there are many exceptions, including the large Ghost moths which have the quaint distinction of being 'honorary macros'. Their anatomy suggest that they should be classified as micros but their size makes the notion absurd.

I think that the above are Chrysoteuchia culmella with its beady eye, possibly Celypha lacunana, which is common but always muddles me, and the Common Plume, Emmelina monodactyla, but I will get authoritative opinion from the experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog.  Meanwhile, here is another Laura Ashley macro, the Lesser Cream Wave (Update: sorry, I am pretty sure that these are Dwarf Cream Waves because they were very small) and a Burnished Brass with an unusually sparse collection of reflecting and refracting metallic wing scales. 

Lilac Lovely

You need to be careful in scattering superlatives about moths, because something even lovelier has a habit of coming along next. A couple of posts ago, I was extolling the glories of the Beautiful Hook-tip. Now the Lilac Beauty has paid a call and I think it wins the crown.

By coincidence, it's a moth with a similar odd habit of resting with part of its forewing furled, like a larger version of the Barred Straw which featured in my last post. Coincidence strikes too in the fact that the last time I featured this moth, in early July 2013, it followed an earlier post in which I described the Beautiful Hook-tip. Then as now, I mentioned that ten UK moths are accorded the title 'beautiful' in their names; and then as now, I hastily added that many more have the word 'beauty'.  Moths, like history, repeat themselves.

There were lots of other overnighters in the trap including three Elephant Hawks, Two Eyed Hawks and a Privet Hawk. And also the Clay, above, with its pointy white eye and the Figure of 80 below and to the left. This is very much the high season, helped by delicious sunshine albeit not enough rain.

After recording my first-ever Lackey last week, I now have another in a darker colourway. And the scene in the eggboxes was enlivened by the 'looper' caterpillar below which travelled around the various labels at impressive speed.

Lobster pot

I have had some unusual things in the trap from time to time - a frog, a blackbird and four hornets in one go - but I wouldn't expect to find a lobster there. Crayfish maybe, which are abundant in the nearby Oxford canal and river Cherwell. But not the full sea-going crustacean.

Here is a Lobster, however. A very fine moth whose name is explained if you ever have the good fortune to come across its caterpillar - pictured below, from the Moth Bible.  I never have; that remains on my dwindling wish-list. But the adult moth is joy enough, especially when it takes a good long time to warm up, as was the case this morning.

Although my photography is not very good, the technical brilliance of the iPhone captures details such as the way that the 'TV aerial' antennae end in a single spike I am endlessly fascinated by antennae, if only because we otherwise ever-so-superior human beings do not have them, and here is yet another variation to add to my collection.

The Lobster has a distinctive resting position when completely off-guard, with its hindwings peeping out from under the forewings like an oversize petticoat. It shares this with the Poplar Hawk, while the next moth, the curious little Barred Straw, also has an odd way of sleeping. Hiding its underwings completely, it looks like a frail monoplane, especially the German Storch aircraft which used to feature in our war comics when I was small.

This one had a narrow escape because it flew up from the eggboxes just after my first photo and - to continue the wartime analogy - a robin zoomed in like a Spitfire. I just managed to shoosh the bird away, only to watch helplessly as it turned its attentions to a second, pale-coloured moth which also flew ill-advisedly out of the trap.

Without sounding too callous, I hope, that proved an interesting experience. Although the bird flew much faster, its strikes kept missing as the moth jinked about, clearly aware that it was being hunted. Then a blackbird joined in, causing enough confusion for the moth to reach safety in a hydrangea. Such aerial combat, which also iincludes bats with their stealth and radar armoury at night (countered, amazingly, by anti-sonar abilities in some moths), goes on all the time but is rarely seen by us.

Back at the trap, there were about 200 moths, the macros including three Elephant Hawks and this lovely smudgy Clouded Silver, above, which completes a trio of Laura Ashley species following the Single-dotted Wave and Treble Brown-spot which came at the end of last week.  Then we have the familiar shape of a Silver Y, a moth of great interest to entomologists at the moment because its long-held 'immigrant' status seems to be changing definitely to 'resident'. The moth world would be a good retirement hobby for Home Office officials.

And thirdly, here is a very small macro - hence the thumb photo - I apologise for the blur.  I think that it is a Rosy Minor, from the patterning, although it is small enough to be a Least one.

The micros will have to wait for their IDs until after early morning tea, but there are some nice ones this morning. I think that the first, highly distinctive one must be Pammene aurita or regiana; it isn't easy to tell because the Micro Bible shows these species from the side and they don't seem to tally exactly.  

This next one's distinctive too and I was lucky with the light for the first photo. I've included the second pic to show what a difference such things make; the beautiful patterning is much harder to make out. Update: sadly, it's back to the dunce's corner for me, after such high hopes. The kindly expert Nigel on the Upper Thames Moths blog says: Hi Martin, the first micro is probably Dichrorampha alpinana, but these are a tricky group to do from photos. The second one is Phycita roborella. Checking the Bible again, I should have got the first, but I'd definitely have failed with the second. On the cheery side, both species are new to my list.

In conclusion, I can tell you definitely that this morning's final moth is Hypsopygia costalis, more attractively known as the Gold Triangle. Even I can see that.

Beautiful indeed

A favourite moth was sitting on the trap's transparent cowl this morning, unmolested by an inquisitive blackbird which was grubbing about in the long grass nearby. It's a Beautiful Hook-tip, one of ten macro moths in the UK awarded the adjective 'beautiful' in their names, all of them deservedly including the tautological-sounding Beautiful Snout.  It wasn't the first moth I spotted, mind. In the grass around the trap were this Bloodvein and a Swallow Prominent (Update: sorry, Lesser Swallow Prominent; thanks Edward in Comments) clinging to a slender skyscraper of a grass blade:

The will-it-won't-it nature of our weather at the moment had me in two minds about turning on the lamp last night but I was encouraged by Edward's point in Comments yesterday that moths like warm and humid conditions because they keep their wings moist; something I never knew. So I placed it under the shelter of a large beech and this morning, all was electrically well. And there were plenty of moths.

The first, above, is a Dingy Shears, I think. If so, it is new to my list (which I must update when time permits; to my surprise, new arrivals continue to come after seven years of trapping here).  Next we have a new-for-the-year, a Marbled White-spot consorting with the many Marbled Minors of all colours and patterns which are currently a staple in the eggboxes.

Talking of spots leads me on to dots and a moth whose name never fails to puzzle me. Below is the lovely little Single-dotted Wave. Why single? Was the namer's vision blurring like mine? It is one of life's mysteries which I have still to solve. Like yesterday's Treble Brown-spot, this is very much a 'Laura Ashley' moth, reminiscent of the days when young women including my wife-to-be wafted around like so many milkmaids or similar background rural characters from Jane Austen.

Small Magpies were abundant in their cruder but still appealing version of black and white, with those touches of yellow to add interest. And then we have two versions of the Silver-ground Carpet, both perching on the dark plastic bowl of the trap and one much lighter than the other.

For the micros - which actually include the Small Magpie though it is quite a big moth - here are another Variegated Golden Tortrix like yesterdays and the distinctive fellow below which I recall from previous visits but to which I shall have to return to confirm ID. Update: Nigel from Upper Thames Moths kindly nails him as Notocelia uddmanniana, also known more cosily as the Bramble-shoot Moth. I'm sure he's had predecessors but he's not on my list. So I shall add him.

And finally a coupling of Common Wainscots, just to show how different moths of the same species can be in size.

Thumbnails

I felt quite paternal to the fragile little 'Laura Ashley' moth above, which fluttered out of the eggboxes when I took off the lid, perched on my palm and was very reluctant to move on. It's a Treble Brown-spot, a moth which I first met on holiday in Suffolk, then in central London and only finally here. My hand was useful for scale, as well as apparently cosy for the moth, and I have enlisted other parts of my body to show the snippety size of the next few moths, which might appear bigger than they are without some sort of comparison.

Apologies for the battered condition of my thumbs, partly through gardening (and maybe incessant anti-pandemic hand-washing) to the extent that my touch facility on the iPhone only works every now and then. I also like biting my nails, not through stress, but because scissors or nippers are such a faff.  Anyway, I think our first micro here is a Variegated Golden Tortrix but I will need to check that with the untiring experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog.

Micro number two is another Tortrix but beyond hazarding a guess that it's one of the cnephasia lookalikes, I cannot yet enlighten you any further. Below, however, I do recognise the Large Fruit-tree Tortrix, Archips podana, which is a regular caller here. Update: The unfailing and patient Upper Thames Moths blog's expert Nigel has sorted things out: Hi Martin, regarding the micros you're correct on the first one, Archips xylosteana. The second is Aleimma loeflingiana. Very many thanks. 

Back in the macro moth world, here is my first Blood-vein of 2020, a species aptly named. And lastly below it, that strange creature the Flame moth, like a miniature Buff-tip in its resemblance to a snapped twig or abandoned cheroot. That's it for now. We still hope for rain.