This side of the Blue

I have been tormented by Blues lately, an ordeal which might well be added to Thomas de Quincey's famous passage of opium-laced writing:

I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Seeva lay in wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. Thousands of years I lived, and was buries in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles, and was laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.

How about that for an exciting opening to this post...

Now back to earth, because my torment consisted only of wanting to photograph one of the UK's Blue butterflies but only ever seeing one when I didn't have my camera with me. Fellow enthusiasts will know, however, what agonies of frustration this involves.

Yesterday it ended. Penny and I were biking into Oxford along the canal towpath when a glimmer of blue flickered in front of my handlebars and I skidded to a stop. It was a Holly Blue and after three or four failed attempts to creep up on it, I found it creeping up on me. It settled just in front of me, between my legs. So the photographs above involved a creaky version of the school gym exercise of touching your toes.

Later on our expedition we met three boys who'd caught the fine American Crayfish shown here. Their Mum shouted across the canal from the garden of their house that supper was ready - pork chops - but they were planning to have the crayfish instead. We were also served a magic cup of coffee at the Ashmolean whose residual froth resembled the roofline of the Randolph Hotel opposite. Shades of tea-leaf soothsaying.

And to end with, some moths, which is what this blog is supposed to be about. This morning I'm off early to help identify arrivals at traps in the RSPB's Big Wild Sleepout at Wytham Woods. More on this tomorrow.

The Gothic, an excellent moth whose tracery resembles ancient church windows

Head-on, it also resembles ancient Goth invaders of the Roman Empire

The Garden Pebble, aka micro Evergestis forficalis

Lean and mean - micro Agriphila straminella Update: sorry, it's A. tristella
- many thanks to Ray in Comments

Smoky Wainscot

Shaded Broad-bar

Small Waved Umber - which is small, waved and um, Umber

Yellow underwings are notoriously reluctant to show their underpants,
so many thanks to this one (which was totally zonked-out)

Who's looking at you, kid?

Who wouldn't return the apparent grin of this Spectacle Moth which celebrated the second leg of UK Moth Night by visiting the trap last night? It arrived with a small party of newcomers so far as our new home in Oxfordshire is concerned, although a couple of them were occasional overnighters in Leeds.

The vivid one above, which chose its eggbox with a skilled eye to camouflage, is a large female Rosy Rustic. Its small husband, or at least a male, follows straight after like one of those little gents in a Bamforth's seaside postcard.



Rosy Rustic is one of my favourite moth names because of its other connotations; indeed when I first featured one in Leeds, I added an old painting of a cheery farmer from times gone by. This time, here's a typical seaside card with thanks to the excellent Bamforth website.

The cards were made in Holmfirth in the Yorkshire Pennines, which are also home - in the nearby town of Marsden  - to the Mikron theatre company which has taken its plays round the canal network in a narrowboat for 42 years. We went to the pub last night for this year's ace offering Don't Shoot the Messenger, a very funny (and informative) play about the Post Office. 

Cheers! Mikron's narrowboat gets ready for last night's show. Note courgettes on roof.

If you're anywhere near Oxford, it's on at the Jolly Boatman near Thrupp tonight and the Rock of Gibraltar at Enslow tomorrow. The weblink above has other venues and dates.

Talking of theatre, this little moth proved a drama queen this morning, scuttling off from its eggbox just as I aligned the camera. I then stalked it to six different leaves on the hawthorn hedge nearby, each time missing the shot. Finally, I got one from underneath which wasn't good enough for my identification skills, although the moth has what looks to me entertainingly like a 'Nerr, nerr, can't get me' expression; and then, on the eighth attempt, I managed to snap it. It's an Oblique Carpet.

The trap has (human) visitors

We have just started a series of three 'Moth Nights' in the UK, an exercise conducted every year by Butterfly Conservation and the enthusiasts' magazine Atropos whose website has a very good Flight Arrivals page, modelled on airport info screens but dealing with moths rather than planes.

By happy chance, our neighbours have family visiting and so quite a group of us gathered round the trap this morning instead of just me in my pyjamas. A pleasant change for those moths who were awake.

A Swallow Prominent scopes out its new surroundings

A Canary-shouldered Thorn prepares for take-off. Next away: a Silver Y

Two grandchildren did an excellent job of spotting interesting slumberers including the notable Sexton Beetle above (gruesome facts about it if you follow that link) and used their warm hands as launchpads for some of the more jittery moths which exercised their wings to raise their body temperatures to the level which gives them sufficient energy to fly. Impressively, no-one was put off by less welcome visitors to the eggboxes, including wasps of varying sizes, fortunately all pretty dopey.

Careful. They are not dead, but sleeping

The star of the moths for me was this beautiful Poplar Kitten below, along with the glowing little micro Argyresthia goedartella which I've chosen to head the post. The latter was the size of a small splinter.

Are we nearly there yet? Poplar Kitten ascends an eggbox cone

The beautiful patterning and colours of the Poplar Kitten. Dress designers take note

Moth Night's organisers have chosen the tiger moths to highlight this year's activities in the media; understandable, as their vivid colours make them obvious poster boys and indeed they feature on the cover of my Moth Bible. But also unwise, in my view, because (quite apart from any decline in their numbers) the chances of many people seeing the Garden Tiger used in the press release are slim. I only saw my first this year, at the age of 63. And a visit from the Jersey Tiger used as an illustration by my former colleagues in the Guardian is super-unlikely. However, in the spirit of the thing, here is my tigerish contribution: one of three Ruby Tigers in the trap which flashed us a view of its bright red breeches and stripy body. Click on any pic to make them full-screen.

Familiar faces, plus the usual conundra

New moths are still arriving in the trap overnight but their numbers are much exceeded by familiar faces as the year's second generation gets into its stride. These are welcome, especially when they include one of my favourites from the rich batch of Oxfordshire species which we didn't get in Leeds: the Chocolate-tip, above.

Is this related to my fatal attraction to chocolate itself, shown yet again yesterday when Penny and I fell for a bag of Chocolate Eclairs at Woodall services on the M1? Maybe, but I am equally fond of the Prominent family, three of which turned up here last night.

The Lesser Swallow Prominent in my second picture adopted an unusual sprawl in its eggbox; normally these moths crouch low to the ground with their wings folded, like racing cars. The Coxcomb Prominent, just above, meanwhile perched on the trap rim (look at that dew; there was no rain overnight); and the third of the group was the darkly handsome Iron Prominent below.

Talking of dew, look how much has gathered on this Mother of Pearl, which chose to doze in the grass a few feet from the trap.

As ever, I have a stack of other moths awaiting identification when I get time. In case any of my friendly experts are around and not on holiday, or others would like a stab, here are some of them. Update: many thanks to CT for her macro IDs and to Dave for coming back to this post after his holidays and doing the lot. Very much appreciated. See answers to my conundra below.

This one and the next are Common Rustics

Above and below are Flounced Rustics

Above is a Straw Underwing and below the micro Cydia splendana

Above, a Caddis Fly and below Agriphila tristella

Below: tristella's relative Agriphila straminella, a regular visitor

Above: Cydia splendana from the side and below another Common Rustic

Above, a Dark Arches and below a Straw Underwing with wing clipped

A Common Carpet above and below, finally, a micro 

Carcina quercana, sonorous name. Many thanks to CT and Dave,

the latter especially for coming back to the post after hols.

Small, brown, grey and annoying are the words which initially come to mind. But when you look at each one in detail - click on the pic to enlarge - the heart softens. And I should know the last one - Carcina quercana, the UK's only, lonely representative of the Peleopodidae micro family, because it's on the cover of my micro-moth Bible.

Bumbling into focus

Just a little update to sum up the joys of our vintage summer: we've been in Bradford overnight and here's the scene on lavender outside my uncle's home. I'd intended to focus on the Small Tortoiseshell but failed, not untypically, as other pictures in the short series I took showed me.

But Hooray for this bumble bee, which obligingly flew into the empty space where the focus actually was. I then adjusted the camera and managed to get the butterfly sorted out too. As below.

Eye spy

Just a small post today, albeit one with a large eye in the micro above. I'm Spring-cleaning my photos and want somewhere to put these micros to classify at leisure. They are all tiny but thanks to the wonders of digital photography, I think there's enough detail to sort them out. Eventually.

Fracking, anting and pecking

I seen from our excellent local paper the Oxford Times that we live at the bottom of a triangular area suitable for fracking. So when Penny spotted this visitor from the shower, stabbing away at a particular spot on the lawn, that's what we imagined he was up to.

A friend round for supper then suggested an alternative theory: that the bird, a Green Wodpecker, was deliberately causing vibrations in the soil which might tempt his prey - maybe worms, although they are far less prevalent than in the clay of Leeds - to see what's going on.

A neighbour - the one who fearlessly hosted a spider on his tummy for a recent post - then solved the conundrum. The bird is 'anting', Hoovering up the little creatures from their underground nest (of which we have many in the garden).  As it says on the RSPB website which has a much better photo than mine, Green Woodpeckers' diet consists of 'Ants, ants and more ants.'

The bird's laughing cry, known as a 'yaffle', is part of our lives here, along with Greater Spotted Woodpeckers which eat from our other neighbours' bird nuts as above - sorry for long-range blur. its diet is more like 'Nuts, nuts and more nuts.'

You can see what game we play on the lawn, btw, which the woodpecker's excavations have now made slightly more challenging. We inherited a croquet set from one of my grannies, a virtuous Methodist whose high moral standards only slipped when she had a mallet in her hand. It is a game where no quarter is given.

In Moth Land meanwhile, the trap was pleasantly manageable this morning after recent rain, with a small population including Pale and Pebble Prominents and glowing Canary-shouldered Thorns, plus these new comers: a Straw Underwing, I think, alongside a Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, above and a Chequered Fruit Tortrix, below. The first is a decent-sized moth, as big as a 10p coin; the latter no larger than a grapefruit pip.