Orange blaze

Oh what a lovely moth the Frosted Orange is! And its annual appearance heralds the way for the various yellow and orange Sallows which are a feature of late Summer and early Autumn. I'm glad to say that its well-camouflaged sleeping place was not spotted by my inquisitive Robin - whose famous redbreast has something in common with the colours of the moth.

 

Good to have a Dark Spectacle in the trap too. They seldom visit although I get so many of the ordinary Spectacle that I may have overlooked its less common cousin. I like the fact that both species have a pair of rather Italianate 'moustaches' as well as their eponymous spectacles which are best seen from head-on as in the very first picture I published on this blog, back on 11 June 2008.  As you can see, below, I was quick to acknowledge the difficulties with ID which I knew I would face.

The third source of pleasure in the trap was a trio of Old Ladies - shabby-looking creatures even when in good condition but satisfyingly BIG. To be accurate, one of them was just outside the lid on the leaf of a nearby Romneya poppy. They all woke up surprisingly quickly for large moths and high-tailed off.

Lastly for today, a modest but nicely-coloured and patterned member of the brown and grey hordes: a Square-spot Rustic.  I think.  Update: Nope. Many thanks to Stewart in Comments who expertly spies the two small black dots which make this a Small Square-spot.  I wasn't so far adrift but...

Palely loitering

 

The Pale Eggar has been only an occasional visitor to the lamp here in Oxfordshire and never called when we lived in Leeds. My first was on 7 September 2015 and the second five years later on 28th August 2020. Now I have had a third on 31 August this year and a fourth, on the bulbholder below,  the night before last. It is classified as only locally common and indeed is infrequently recorded from the south of the county although a fellow-enthusiast on Thames Valley Moths, who has had only one in his garden this year, attracted 30 to a portable trap which he lit in nearby woodland. A creature of habitat, like so many moths.

The trap is continued to bring a reduced catch recently with faithful regulars for the time of the year, such as the Rosy Rustic and Common Wainscot - the darker form - in the next two pictures. It is also brightened by Burnished Brasses, both the forms juncta, with the central brown cross-bar undivided, and aurea where the two shiny sections are joined. Disagreement continues in the expert world about whether small DNA and genital differences warrant dividing them into two distinct species.

Brighter than these moths by some distance was the Blue Supermoon which I mentioned in my last post. I woke up at about 1am and managed to get the picture below, although it didn't look hugely different from the usual full moon, to be honest. But definitely a powerful counter-attraction to the usually dominant light trap.

Lastly for today's moths, I was struck by the fragile beauty of the Satin Wave below while having a very enjoyable time watching dragonflies hawking for prey in the sunshine. Conehead will correct me if necessary, but in the composite picture, I think I have the female and male of the Common Darter in the top row and a Migrant Hawker, including a close-up of its evilly-smiling, cartoon villain 'face'. 

Halting hummer

 

This is the first time in all my 73 years that I have seen a Hummingbird Hawk moth at rest, other than a couple of specimens which have come into the greenhouse, unknown to me, and expired.

The moth is one of the busiest of its kind, for ever hovering over clumps of lavender and other scented Summer plants, a daylight flyer and therefore often seen, usually to understandable wonderment. "Is that a humming bird?" I've been asked a dozen or more times. And indeed, although small enough, the moth is bigger than some of the smallest humming birds.

This one was nectaring in the standard, fascinating manner in the grandchildren's garden. Alerted by my wandering past, it nipped up into this large shrub and perched there, out of reach of a decently-focussed photograph but close enough for the above.  I was then distracted by the jewel-like flutterings of a group of amorous Common Blue butterflies including the obligingly posing male below. What lovely creations they are!

In the world of moths meanwhile, I am currently being visited by Snouts galore, large numbers of boring (to me, sorry, I just cannot get the hang of ID-ing them) brown and grey types like this Flounced Rustic, and also the much cheerier Orange Swift, below that.

Equally welcome, Light Emeralds have emerged in large numbers along with the sinister-looking Box moth, whose voracious caterpillars are genuinely sinister to owners of box hedges, including the National Trust which looks after miles of them. 

My star, though, is this Old Lady, below, a venerable-looking dame with a fine turn of speed once disturbed. I watched a large moth like this fluttering high above the trap last night, soon after I had turned it on, but the rival glories of the Blue Supermoon kept whatever it was safely up high and the catch this morning was standard for the time of the year.

A mixed bag

 

How encouraging that we live in a world where young enthusiasts for moths and butterflies, or indeed other insects, can clad themselves in clothes which Linnaeus might well have envied. And how nice that my light trap provided a couple of fine Poplar Hawk moths this week for a couple of friends who had heard of my strange entomological goings-on and came to have lunch and a look.

Less happily, the Large, Small and Green-veined White butterflies which are currently floating about like small handkerchiefs have shown their less appealing side by laying eggs on our purple sprouting.  Here's the result which I am afraid I am dealing with ruthlessly. We lost the whole of last year's crop to severe frosts and I am determined to salvage this years.

Other butterflies have been absorbing me on walks round the big field near our house, and there are cheerful signs that next year's population is going to flourish. Here's a Brown Argus caught during an interval in a mating dance with a friend (second pic), followed by two Small Skippers which were up to the same tricks.

And just for good measure, here's a contented and very beautiful male Common Blue whose mating perhaps took place earlier in the day.

My morning checks on the moths are watched closely at the moment by this robin, whose appearance on Instagram received 'likes' from both the American and the Iranian croquet associations. This got me wondering wistfully if the world's problems could be sorted out over croquet but the game is so competitive that I doubt it. My granny, who was a saintly woman in all other respects, was utterly ruthless when she had a mallet in her hand.

Here are some recent moths - from the top, reading left to right: Satin Wave (I think), Green Carpet, Spectacle, Anania Coronata micro, Common Plume micro, Straw Underwing, a pair of Grey Daggers, another Common Plume and a Pebble Prominent.

And in the second composite: Iron Prominent, Brimstone, Willow Beauty, female Small Scallop, Endotricha flammealis micro, Dark-barred Twin-spot Carpet, Garden Pebble micro, European Corn-borer micro and Small Waved Umber. 

Finally, a couple of dragonflies, the top one a Small Red Damselfly I think and the second one - which I saw near Exmouth - possibly a female Black Darter. Update: See Conehead in Comments who, helpfully as ever, suggests that they are actually Ruddy Darter dragonflies, the top one female and the bottom one probably male but my camera angle is not good enough to be certain.  Many thanks as always.

Spider's prey

It was my great-niece Connie who spotted it - a Red Admiral strangely poised in mid-air, like a kestrel but without its wings moving. Upside-down as well. We crept up, looked more closely and saw what we had feared: it had been trapped by a spider in a large but scarcely visible web.

It appeared to be dead but when I swiped the air nearby, it twitched feebly and then began to struggle. I circled my hand around it and it came free but still attached to pieces of the spider's silk. Down it went but its flapping wings freed it in time to avoid a crash and it escaped a little drunkenly into the safety of some shrubs.

Connie was duly hailed as the Butterfly Saviour but it was a handy lesson for the children, and for all of us there, about the ruthless side of Nature. Most people are naturally kind to animals and rightly so but animals have no reason to be kind to one another and seldom are.

In the moth trap meanwhile, I have had my first visit from one of my Top Moths, the beautiful Black Arches with its bold dazzle camouflage upper wings and a pink-striped body which is normally hidden from sight.  This one obligingly perched on the roughly transparent trap-cowl so you can make out the pink through the age-battered plastic.

The only downside to this beautiful creature for me is its dull and inappropriate name, especially in the world of moths where naming has been taken to inspired lengths. The Americans, however, call it the Nun Moth and you can find sites online asking questions such as 'Which is the bug that looks like a nun?'  I can't say that it resembles any nuns that I have seen or met, but at least the idea is more interesting that yet another Arches moth, alongside the Light and ubiquitous Dark.

A more serious downside for those who are not simply beguiled by moths is that the species is seen as a threat to hardwood trees, like the Gypsy Moth featured in my last post. The Americans in particular are worried by this; the awful prospect of an invasion of tree-munching nuns.

Travelling moth

 

Ten years ago, it would have been a big surprise to open the light trap and find the guest shown above. But the Gypsy Moth has staged a dramatic comeback since just before the pandemic, when the trickle of some 30 records since the 1950s began to turn into a flood.

I saw my first example at the grandchildren's home in east London in August 2019 when my keenly entomological granddaughter came rushing out to ask me what it was. A year later, two of them came on the same night to the trap here. I haven't seen any since then but plenty of other people have, across the South of England. News has spread as rapidly, because the Gypsy's caterpillars are a serious threat to many trees and are on the  world list of Top 100 invasive pests. Quite a distinction.

However voracious, the moth is an interesting species with the female only very seldom seen to fly in spite of her having larger and more beautiful white and creamy wings than the male shown here. He gets the terrific antennae instead. There used to be a distinct British sub-species in the Fens but draining and tree clearance led to its extinction with the last one recorded in 1907.  When a colony sprang up in Redbridge, north London, in 1995, it was eradicated by pest controllers. 

Moths such as the Redbridge ones and my visitors are described in Home Office terms as 'immigrants', 'former residents' and 'adventive', the last a term meaning having a toehold but not fully at home. Yet. The way things are going, we will be seeing more and more Gypsies, just as the very destructive Box Moth is clearly here to stay. One last distinction: its tiny caterpillars have a few meals of tree leaves then climb as high as they can and dangle, allowing themselves to be caught by the wind and sometimes blown as far as half-a-mile. An ingenious example of dispersal. 

A head as good as the Gypsy's belongs to the Canary-shouldered Thorn which is coming to the trap in some numbers at the moment and is extremely well-named. I first photo-ed this one at 7.15am before tucking the eggboxes away in our shed, out of reach of the robin. At 5.30pm, it was still around and sound asleep so I took it out on a leaf into the garden for a photoshoot closer to Nature.

Another recent moth which hung about for a whole day and night was the Lesser Swallow Prominent below which I first photographed at 8.15am. 

I was then distracted by other things and it wasn't until the next morning that I went back to the trap, which I had left outside, by which time there had been quite heavy rain.  Guess who was there? the same moth, sound asleep in spite of water drops covering its back like large beads.

More soon on other delightful visitors but to conclude for today, here's a composite of pictures taken during a couple of hours' gardening in the sunshine.  It shows, going across top to bottom, a familiar Peacock butterfly, a Small Skipper, a female Common Blue, a Brimstone, a Mint Moth, a very battered Silver Y moth, a Small White butterfly, a Shaded Broad-bar moth and a Large White. Happy times!