Misty times approaching

It is too early to be thinking much about Autumn with the belated Summer sunshine we've enjoyed in the last week, but the moths are beginning to indicate the coming change of season. Red Underwings have been calling for a while now, flashing the warning colouration on their hindwings in the same way as Poplar Hawks - I had both species giving a performance (above) after a little tickling last week.

The Sallow moths are another example, with their range of yellows and pinks, as in the Centre-barred Sallow shown left, brightening up the eggboxes in the same way as the August, September, Dusky and Canary-coloured Thorns which currently visit every night - here's one of the Canary-coloureds below, showing off the reason for its name. As the leaves begin to turn from all their different greens to brown, russet and gold, such colourings make successful camouflage.

Other visitors coming in large numbers include the Light Emerald whose delicate pale green fades very rapidly into a creamy and then almost pure white - the four examples below came on the same night. There are often more in the foliage around the trap, like so many petals, than actually inside. The Burnished Brass with its glinting metallic wing scales and the Common Carpet are also here in force. 

Lastly for today, here are some representatives of the main colourways in the trap at the moment, grey and brown but nonetheless beautifully-patterned moths. The distinctive black marks of the first pair show them to be Flounced Rustics, the 'stained glass window tracery' moth is a female Feathered Gothic (the males have feathery antennae) and the final visitor with its wide Italian moustache is a Willow Beauty, a species which abounds this month.

Nelly the Elephant. Or Norman

I'm sorry that I have got very behind with posting news on the blog. Post-lockdown, life has got a lot busier and we're also eking out every moment of outdoor life before the Summer comes to an end.

So it was actually two weeks ago that we were walking home from a river swim with the grandchildren when we saw this chubby chap zooming across the road, luckily before he was squashed by one of the regularly passing cars.

He's an Elephant Hawk moth caterpillar in his final instar, or stage between sloughing off skins, when the green colouring which he - or maybe eventually she - has enjoyed since hatching from an egg, turns into the same grey as an elephant. We scooped him up and popped him in a box with a bit of soil and plenty of leaves and scrub.  My granddaughter was touchingly keen to find some willowherb leaves in case he was hungry but I sternly resisted, explaining that he (or she again) was looking for somewhere to form a cocoon and pupate and needed to be left alone.

He duly spun his coccon after a certain amount of rather alarming twisting too and from like a person in pain, a phenomenon I've seen before in caterpillars on the verge of this extraordinary change. Next morning, we found a tightly woven bundle of material with the cocoon deep inside. And that's where he'll stay until Spring, dissolving into a sort of soup before emerging as a glorious pink, olive and yellow moth - a species often shown here in the past, ever since the earliest days of the blog - the rather shady pic on the left is the first Elephant to visit me after Penny gave me the trap for my birthday in May 2008 - more here: http://martinsmoths.blogspot.com/2008/06/here-we-are.html

Below are a couple of pictures of the cocoon with its highly effective outer defence of spiky hawthorn twigs, the first taken a fortnight ago and the second just now. More news in the Spring, I hope

Meanwhile the trap has continued to attract a good range of late Summer moths with Poplar Hawks keeping up a good tally - a relief when the grandchildren are here and want interesting and unflappable moths on their fingers.

Other arrivals at the time of the cattie were welcomed by me in my pyjamas, including the lesser Treble-bar below, followed by a pug of some kind - but which? I will seek enlightenment either from a kindly reader or the Upper Thames Moths blog   Then, pyjama-less, we have a delicate Common Wave, a Bloodvein, a very dark example of the micro Pyrausta aurata (I think) and a Snout seen from underneath.

Finally, here are two Brimstones: first the moth and then the butterfly - the latter always the first to appear every year and still going strong. I saw several in the garden this afternoon.

Crescent-shaped

Penny and I quite often discuss whether collecting is an overwhelmingly male pursuit and generally agree that the answer is yes. I am part of the evidence, in that the arrival of anything new in the moth trap gives me particular pleasure. And I have been very lucky in that regard over the years.

The unspectacular moth above is another to add to my tally - belatedly because I first featured it here at the end of a post on 8th August in which I celebrated my first visit from a Waved Black but ignorantly dismissed this moth as 'another variation of the Common or Lesser Common Rustic'.

So, warm thanks to the Commentor Pembrokeshire Birds who kindly suggested that the moth is actually a Crescent, an ID just confirmed by the expert Peter Hall on the invaluable Upper Thames Moths Blog. Up goes my tally again. I will add the numbers up again soon.

Meanwhile the moth trap keeps busy; this morning brought me the interesting trio of swift moths, above. The top one is a male Common Swift and the middle one a very nice and well-patterned male Orange Swift, so nice in fact that I thought at first that it might be a Map-winged Swift, a relative which has yet to pay me a call. The bottom moth, which is quite dramatically larger, is a female Orange Swift, albeit without the orange which is exclusive to the male.  These moths - five of them in the swift family altogether with the other two being the even more jewel-like Gold Swift and the Ghost moth - have the distinction of coming first in the Moths Bible. Sadly, that is because they are among the most primitive of UK moths, with no proboscis and therefore no ability to feed. Here they are again, one by one and closer-to.

 Another caller was the Small Square-spot, which I haven't seen for a while and to be honest wouldn't have recognised had it not been for recent mention of it on the Upper Thames Moths blog.

Out in the sunshine, meanwhile, P and I and a friend had an excellently long look at a very patient male Southern Hawker dragonfly. What a beautiful creature. If you see a dragonfly out patrolling, remember that they tend to fly in fairly confined areas and often come back to the plant or perch which they have only recently left.

The sun has also brought out some pleasant blooms in our garden for insects to visit including this miniature-flowered version of Morning Glory and our Magnolia grandiflora whose vast waxy blooms share the very short life of the Morning Glories whose name derives from the fact that the flower lasts for less than a day.

And the butterflies and some moths like the sunlight too. Here is a Speckled Wood on our rhubarb, a quiet haven from the buddleia which is thronged with Red Admirals, Small Tortoiseshells, Painted Ladies and assorted Whites. And a Silver Y beneath the leaves of our Cooper's Burmese rose (a climber which I much recommend).

Webb's wonder

 

Another newcomer for my list today: as soon as I saw this beige-y wainscot at the very end of my trawl through the eggboxes, I thought: 'Mmmm. Don't think I've seen that before.' Sure enough, it is a Webb's Wainscot, an attractive member of that large tribe and still ranked Nationally Scare although it seems to be on the increase.

It was first described as long ago as 1790 by a Bavarian naturalist Eugenius Johann Christoph Esper who was encouraged by his botany professor at the university of Erlangen to abandon his original course which was in theology. Who knows what he might have achieved in the church, but he certainly did a lot of excellent work on butterflies and moths including several books whose value and relevance has lasted.

It might therefore be called more justly Esper's Wainscot but Mr Webb took the honours when it was first discovered in the UK, in Kent in 1879.  It is noted for the very widely scattered range of sightings, reaching as far north as Spurn point in Yorkshire and Tynemouth near Newcastle upon Tyne, but only in very small numbers and not yet as colonies. More recent successes have come further south including round here.

Here it is, above, with a similarly beige form of the Common Wainscot and below a view of its slender, cone-like abdomen from behind.  Thank you for paying me a call and adding to my ever-growing list.

In other parts of the trap and its surroundings, the guest list continues at a high occupancy rate. Every morning, there are Brimstones in the grass around the trap and yesterday they were joined by this Poplar Hawk, a moth which is enjoying a very long season this year.

In the trap itself, the micros included this delicate little Ringed China Mark below and the lovely Chequered Fruit-tree Tortrix which is like a piece of jewellery, an enamelled mosaic.

The macro moths furnished my first Shaded Broad-bar of the year as well as a very battered Black Arches whose apparently full life hadn't affected its liveliness and flying skills,

Neighbours who came to see the moth trap recently and remarked on the beauty of some White Ermines WhatsApped me this photo of a caterpillar they found and were startled to be told that it will turn into..a White Ermine. How a hairy black beastlet can metamorphose into the lovely white adult with its black dots like the fur collar of a member of the House of Lords is one of the many, many wonders of Nature.

Then this morning, as we were having breakfast outside, a bright flutter of red followed by a large, dark triangle on a sunny wall indicated the presence of a Red or - hope against hope - a Dark Crimson Underwing. Both are regular dayflyers and this one proved to be Red. Common but delectable, like the one in the moth trap earlier this week.

Finally, I was delighted to discover these stained glass butterflies in the little church at Wytham, near Oxford where the wonderfully wooded estate was given to Oxford University after the Second World War by Colonel and Mrs ffennel whose forebears the windows commemorate. You can read the story of this remarkable couple here on the website of the Open Air School they founded to give children from towns and cities some experience of the countryside. A touching quite from a little girl pupil in a letter home is 'This must be a very holy place'. Another example of how nature in the hands of people like the ffennels and Herr Esper of Webb's Wainscot can do us all a power of good.