Okey-doke

Today's moth from my current abundant store appears to be an advertising for OK magazine. That's how its distinctive marking reads to me, at least on its right forewing.

It's actually known as the Figure-of-Eighty, which makes sense if you look at its left forewing instead.

The markings are a particular distinct form of the kidney-shaped pattern familiar in many UK moths, sometimes prominent, mostly less so. With this species, the figures are always clear and rather beautifully drawn. There is also a Figure-of-Eight moth, a burlier fellow with cruder numbering, but it flies only in the Autumn.

One of these days, I may get the darker type of the Figure-of-Eighty, known as form fusca and first recorded in the 1940s. It is believed to be an immigrant from the Continent, a phenomenon as frequent in the moth world as in the current human one. Like most human migrants, these arrivals in the UK prosper here. By chance, another one of them came to see me at the weekend: the Dark Swordgrass preparing for take-off below. It has been hugely successful, reaching as far north as the Shetland Isles.This moth is usually sound asleep with its wings tightly-folded, so it's refreshing to see it full-on.

Update: I've just been out to examine today's eggboxes and can't resist adding the year's sixth hawk moth, which arrived last night: the beautiful pink and greenish Elephant Hawk. Was some entomological drinking fest responsible for its name, with pink elephants cavorting round the scientists' minds? No, like the related Small Elephant Hawk, its grey-coloured mature caterpillar resembles an elephant's trunk.

Phew what a scorcher

I have a glut of moths. Not that I am complaining, but so many are coming to the trap now that we have really warm evenings at last, that I cannot keep up. Moreover, the days have turned wonderfully sunny too, and who wants to stay in front of a computer in those circumstances? Not me.

So let's take it a moth at a time, or so. And today's is one of my favourites: a master of camouflage whose patterning almost seems to the eye to move. Experts in 'dazzle' deceit would find it well worth their study, for it takes their notion of breaking up a shape - as in the weird Cubist-y patterns on wartime naval ships - a stage further. A broken-up pattern that doesn't stay still. The camera focuses - look at the antennae in the top picture - but cannot pin down those  wavy, subtly-coloured lines.

The moth also has the endearing and very male habit of sticking the tip of its abdomen in the air when at rest. To be exact, the males of the species do. This point is where the moth's sexual organs are and there can be little doubt about why they are doing it. In spite of the temptation, though, female Scorched Wings are seldom seen. The male comes to light traps like mine; the female never. They are only known from occasional appearances on 'sugar', the mixture of rum and treacle which is an older way of attracting moths. The rest of the time, they are thought to roost high up in trees.

I'm also including in today's instalment a pretty Brimstone butterfly, spotted on a lovely walk P and I took this morning along tree-canopied hedge paths almost choked with cow parsley. Look carefully and you'll see that someone else is watching.

Hawks more

An unusual view of the Eyed Hawk showing how its forewings have warning flashes of pink below as well as the 'eyes' on top

A vintage morning in the eggboxes today: no fewer than five different kinds of hawk moth were nestling among the mini-swarms of immigrant Diamond-back micros.

I was fairly sure yesterday evening that it would be a good catch overnight; for the first time since early May, the temperature was really warm. We could almost have had supper out of doors. But this did better than my best hopes.

The Pine Hawk gives me the greatest pleasure as it has only been here once before, last year when a much more battered specimen came to call. 'Battered' and 'Pine Hawk' are a word association as this species flies very fast and appears to have a pioneering spirit. It used to be confined to the South Coast but spread northwards from the mid-20th century, reaching Oxfordshire before the end of the 1940s and now recorded from Yorkshire and further north.

Mine this morning was already itching to be off and it flew away like a jet plane just after my third pic of it, above, getting ready for take-off, by whirring and warming its wings. Next in the pleasure stakes - and hawk moths really do bring out the small boy in grown men - was the Eyed Hawk. Tickle its nose and it promptly flashes its eyed hindwings and starts rocking too and fro, deterrent behaviour which has been recorded as seeing off predatory birds.

The refreshingly greeny Lime Hawk, above, is another favourite and it also has an adventurous spirit, albeit in on a more modest and localised scale than the Pine's. It is seen by day more often than the other hawks; indeed I recall our older son pointing one out on a wall in Jericho when he was a student here, more than a decade ago. Its caterpillars scale trees and the pupae have been found in leaf and twig detritus very nigh up among branches - and even in birdboxes, though presumably unoccupied ones. Otherwise the arrival of a Lime Hawk caterpillar would be like a five-course dinner coming to call, unless theie size, vivid colouring and tail horns deter birds like the Eyed Hawk's 'eyes'.

The Small Elephant Hawk is a wonderful blaze of colour; I'm sorry that one of my photos is so out of focus but perhaps it has the effect of a French Impressionist work. This is a very small hawk moth compared with the other arrivals, but more than compensates with its vivid palette.

Finally, a tatty old Poplar Hawk - above, meeting its Eyed cousin - completed the quintet. I can get a bit blaze about these because they are the UK's commonest hawk moths and often call on me. But they are fine insects with a resting position all of their own which sees the 'hind' wings project further forward than the 'fore' ones. The males also go in for the suggestive upward curl of their abdomen, a 'come hither' habit shared by male Eyeds, as below.

Chilling out

A nicely warm afternoon tempted the Speckled Wood, above, into our garden yesterday. But by 5.30pm, it had started to turn into a chilly evening, so much so that we lit the fire for the second time in three days. The moths were not deterred, however. They provided me this morning with one of the most varied group of guests of the year so far.

My favourite was this hairy old fellow, the Pale Tussock, pictured above alongside a Caddis fly with a neat little quiff, and below with one of its woolly-breeched forelegs reaching out in a doglike fashion. Usually it extends both of them in this way.

Pale Tussock

Then we had a Shears, or as I call it a Secateurs which seems a better description of the little blades on its forewings.

Next, one of the various Marbled Minor species which are hard to tell apart without dissecting intimate body parts. Not my cup of tea. Over on the Upper Thames Moths blog, Mark Griffiths observed recently that early MMs tend to be strongly-marked round here (the species vary a lot in colouring), and this is certainly a darkly handsome one.

Side view

and from above.

Very different now: a couple of delicate Silver-ground Carpets;

and an interesting contrast between two Heart and Darts, the first with a cheery flourish and the second more conventional in patterning. The Moth Bible notes that the patterns can vary and sometimes, as in this case, produce streaks.

Next we have a Clouded Drab Update: actually I think that this may be a Rustic Shoulder-knot. I will check with others more learned. 

A Clouded-bordered Brindle,

a Small Square-spot

a bright-line Brown-eye,

a Setaceous Hebrew Character (on  my dressing gown)

and a Brown Rustic.

Oh and another of those foreign invaders, blown here by the cold weather: a Diamond-back.

A goodly company on a not-very-welcoming night.

Immigrant invasion

Sorry for my Daily Express-style headline but it is true, unlike much of the stuff in that paper (which we have delivered here; one of the novelties of living with 97-year-old Mum-in-law). Why they haven't latched on to the genuine arrival in the UK of thousands, indeed probably millions, of the tiny foreign Diamond-back Moth is a mystery. As Dave Wilton notes on the ever-excellent Upper Thames Moths blog, its larvae may even be found on supermarket broccoli.

Amazingly - because these are tiny creatures as I hope you can tell from the eggbox context of my pic - he reared one which then hatched after only nine days in its pupa, accounting for the epic numbers involved in Diamond-back invasions.  Like the UK's 75 million field voles which I mentioned the other day, this huge increase in our wildlife population passes almost entirely without notice. I bet the Blue Tits and their like are aware, though.

Otherwise, my return to light-trapping after ten days produced a lot of Common Swifts and Treble Lines, one of the latter shown with a graceful White Ermine in my top pic. And there was also this Brown Rustic, above. I'm always flummoxed initially by brown moths and was briefly wondering (because of the markings shown in the second pic) whether it might be a Satellite, way out of that moth's season which ends with April. I know that pride is a sin but I am just a bit self-satisfied about working out the correct answer. When my last Brown Rustic came, on June 6 last year, I needed a kindly commentator's help.

We do indeed live and learn.

Best-laid plans...

...gang aft agley - and so it was with my blithe prediction yesterday that the trap would be lit again last night after Penny and my week in Rome.

Boy Scout cooking

In the wonderful warmth of the Italian capital, I had forgotten all about British weather. As our 'plane's pilot had warned us, to resigned totters from the passenger cabin, it was cold and rainy at Gatwick. It seemed to get colder in central London and when we got home, there was a power cut until midnight.

Girl Guide lights

So, no moths today. Instead, here are some better quality pictures of the Swallowtail  butterfly which called on our roof terrace on the first morning of our stay, plus the Renaissance murals of its possible ancestors from the Castel Sant'Angelo.  I have to add, sadly, that the Swallowtail did not return and we saw very few butterflies in Rome other than 'Whites', plus a possible fritillary in a wilder patch of the Palatine.  But I'm not complaining. We saw plenty of other wonderful things.

Oh, and a couple of grasshoppers from the same early 16th century wall: