Downton Abbey, eat your heart out

I was going to show you some rather alarming pictures of a spider at work today, but the moths have played a blinder overnight and I can't resist them.  We were watching the new series of Downton Abbey when some of them probably flew in. Lord Fellowes, it's high time we had a moth in the plot!

First up, beating all comers in the Pink Eggbox Challenge, is the ravishing Barred Sallow above, a moth new to me both here in Oxfordshire and during eight years of trapping in Leeds. The Burnished Brass below is by contrast a very regular caller, but the pink perhaps brings out its marvellous metallic finish. The second BB pic shows one of the other eight in the trap from a rather unflattering angle. I think she's a she, and just about to lay an egg.

It was the various sallows' night above all; below is a Sallow on pink (sorry, I'm obsessed), another on grey and a third on the Star Wars-y metal bulbholder. And last in the set, a fourth with a Frosted Orange. The sequence shows how varied this moth can be in its palette of yellows, oranges and browns. It is also a tough character. These all spent the first stage of their life cycle over-wintering (and what a long, dour winter!) as eggs laid in the open on twigs.

The Bordered Beauty, below, is an exquisite moth which shares the Sallow's tough streak, spending its winter as an egg too, albeit in the slightly more sheltered nooks and crannies of its foodplants, sallow, hazel, willow and black poplar trees.

Next, another favourite, the Ruby Tiger, in this instance perched on grass near the trap and giving a demonstration of waterproofing. Like sheep, moths can shrug off dew and early morning drizzle, so long as their wingscales do not become soaked.

I think the next one is another new species for me, provided that I have identified it correctly as a Brindled Green. If you click on the pic, the delicate shades of green - my favourite UK moth colour in the mysterious absence of blue - become more apparent.

And to finish with, a couple of micros: a curious Auster aircraft-like plume and a tortrix - with an exciting new scale, a Nasturtium flower, in the last photo to show how small the moth is. The plume is only fractionally bigger. But it would make a lovely brooch for Maggie Smith, the Dowager Countess of Downton. It even has an ermine collar, like a member of the House of Lords.

The admiral and the harvest

I walked to Harvest Festival this morning and was rewarded for my virtue by this beautiful Red Admiral, sunning itself in the glorious weather which has returned. The butterfly was being rewarded, too, for its perseverance during the recent glum spell, unlike this Peacock below which we discovered in rather premature hibernation while getting down some cobwebby chairs from the roofspace.

The Red Admiral was on our sweetcorn, one of the crops I selected for my Little Miss Muffet basket to take to the service, as something we never succeeded in growing in Leeds. Here are some of its other contents. I must tell you how to grow a tin of Heinz oxtail soup sometime.

I will return to the subject of Miss Muffet now, however, because of its entomological origins. The nursery rhyme is based on Thomas Moffett, one of the first well-known English illustrators of butterflies and moths, who also had a liking for spiders.  This wasn't inherited by his daughter.

As for the moths, last night's warmth only attracted the usual early autumn crew of yellow and lunar underwings plus a dainty Sallow. I like this Straw Dot, though, one of three who were all woken up by the warmth of the sunlight flooding their eggboxes, and swiftly flew away.

Little people

Welcome to the weekend - and so far as the blog is concerned, to Micro Morning. The take in the trap was modest last night - about 35 moths - but they included a goodly number of the littlies, the 1627 species of micro moth to be found in the UK.

We were in Cirencester yesterday and bought some cards in a bookshop which advertised itself as 'tiny and independent'. This could be the family motto of the micros, or maybe they could share Rutland's; the smallest county in England boldly proclaims: Multum in parvo. Check out the Light Brown Apple moth in the top picture with the acorn cup for scale to see if you agree that there's much in little..

Light Brown Apple moth - the trap was under an apple tree

I have a train journey to take later today, and I will pore over my micro moth Bible then. But here's a selection from the trap, plus today's winner of the Pink Eggbox Award, a very pretty (but macro) Sallow.

Um... Update: much pondering makes me think that this is Acleris aspersana
albeit a little late in the season

Large Plume - its wings unfurl like umbrellas

Er... Update" Many thanks to ace Guardian Country Diarist Phil Gates in Comments 
whose suggestion that this is a Nettle Tap (Anthophila fabriciana) is, I am sure, correct

Ur again, with my famous acorn cup scale

Pretty on pink - the Sallow

Bit of skirt

I managed to turn on all the various switches last night, after Wednesday's absent-mindedness, and was rewarded with this gallant trouper - a little frayed but still full of life as he/she demonstrated by whirling off when I'd goaded her into showing her skirts just once to often.

A Red Underwing; plentiful here this summer but majestic beside the standard-sized moths in the catch like the Lesser Yellow Underwing above, and dwarfing the Carpets which came in force - the trap being sited close to some fruit trees and bushes which they seem to favour.

Here are various forms of the Common Marbled Carpet plus a nice little Purple Bar, last night's winner of the Pink Eggbox Award.

To finish up with, it's always good to see a spot of green in the moth spectrum and this Red Green Carpet, perched just inside the bowl, obliged.

Bob the spider, learning how flies must feel

I wasn't going to light the lamp last night because of possible rain, but the forecast changed and so I set things up - with one small flaw. In the rigmarole of going backwards and forwards between trap and socket in the dark, I forgot to turn a switch on. As a result, our vegetable patch, and the moths, had an undisturbed, dark night. The effects of age, eh?

So I'll feature the rest of Tuesday's night's busy catch instead; but I've kicked off with a spider so that I can tell you about Penny's electric spider-catcher. There it is - a tube with a gentle suction fan at the bottom. And in it is our latest Bob (All our big spiders are called Bob after a famous one at our old home in Leeds, described in this 2008 post here). He was en route to the garden, unharmed.

We like spiders and the excellent work they do through consuming less useful and pleasant insects; but there is a limit to how much web is acceptable festooned along the eaves of rooms. We're also members of what you might call the 'Charlotte's Web generation'. Marvellous, how much that one book did for an often, and unjustly, despised and feared race.

So to the moths, and evidence in the two pictures above that the Large Yellow Underwings are doing alright after all. There's been concern in the moth-studying world about a fall in their numbers but we seem to have an Autumn surge. Not, thank goodness, in anything like the numbers we got regularly in Yorkshire, but a decent amount. Here are some of their friends in the trap.

One of 15 Common Wainscots

On my favourite pink eggbox - a brown-spot Pinion

I'll ID this nice little micro by-and-by

Who needs Vermont?

Friends have written to say that they want to come and see us 'now that the trees by the river are putting on their autumn garb'. This has got me out of my grumpiness about the loss of our blissful summer. Autumn is a wonderful season in its different way.

Engliah - or maybe European - tree colours are wonderfully subtle, for all the amazing blaze of glory in Vermont and neighbouring states. To watch a beech here for the next few weeks is a lesson in the wonders of nature. Like moths.

Talking of which, autumn is bringing some beautiful visitors to the trap. This morning the first Sallow of this year for me - top picture - was joined by another new arrival, an Autumnal Rustic in his or her smart Robert E. Lee uniform (second pic).  Then there was a Brimstone moth apparently enjoying the taste of its eggbox; and finally for now a Canary-shouldered Thorn on the transparent canopy - rather worn after all these years, hence the blurry first picture taken from below, sorry.

More came besides, including this Plume below, a form of micro whose spindly T-shape is always a pleasure to see. Part Two of today's visitors tomorrow - because I fear we may get more rain tonight.

The fat lady hasn't sung

It's easy to bring the curtain down prematurely on the moth-trapping season and I got a welcome rebuke on that score this morning. For the first time here (although they were regulars in Leeds) a pair of Black Rustics graced the eggboxes. The moth is one of the best of early Autumn's visitors.

Most Rustics score badly with me, as a tribe of confusingly similar grey and brownish moths. This darkly handsome character with its golden wing crescents is a major exception.

He or she also has brightly contrasting white underwings, but it isn't easy to get a Black Rustic to pose like a Calvin Klein model. Above is the best I can do. Below are some other nice visitors to the trap on a cold but dry night.

 Lunar Underwing, beige version

Is this the micro Pammene aurita? Update: Yes, Ben agrees in comments. Yo!

Dark Swordgrass - a sturdy immigrant built for long flights Update: Ben keeps me on the
straight and narrow once again: apologies, although long and slender like the Dark Swordgrass, this is actually a Turnip moth - prosaic but new to my trap in Oxfordshire

Lunar Underwing, usual grey version

And I think this is yet another take on the Lunar Underwing. Confusing, eh?
Update: confused is the word. Sagacious Ben in comments corrects me. It's
a Lesser Yellow Underwing. Second time in a week I've missed that one. Oh dear.

And a Snout which paid a late-night visit to our kitchen

Meanwhile in Witney, lair of David Cameron and fewer than ten miles from here, there has been a magnificent moth episode, recorded on the outstanding website of Upper Thames Butterfly Conservation.  With grateful acknowledgments to them and the fervent hope that it may also happen to me, I reproduce it verbatim:

Mary Elford passed on this exciting report from Adrian State in Witney, Oxon: "On Thursday 22nd August I was working late on my computer. I always keep the study window open to welcome any interesting moths that may be flying past but on this evening I got a real surprise. At approximately 1.45am something large and dark flew in through the window and for a few seconds I thought that a pipistrelle bat had lost its bearings, but as it settled next to the ceiling light I was amazed to see that it was a huge moth and what was more it had a clearly defined skull shape on the thorax. It could only be a Death's Head Hawk-moth which I had never before seen in the living form. What really impressed me was its size; I often get Poplar Hawk-moths flying in and although they are large this was clearly quite a bit larger still. I typed "Deaths Head moth" into my computer's browser and on finding the Natural History Museum page on this moth I read that it squeaked when touched. Well, nothing ventured.... I gently pushed it with the tip of a wooden ruler and was immediately rewarded by a very loud and distinct squeak! Whilst I marvelled at this, the moth decided it had had quite enough of satisfying my curiosity and flew back out through the open window. At this point I was extremely cross with myself as my camera had been on my desktop beside me throughout the visit. Ah well, next time."