Identical quads

This is the most beautiful of the set, as the little grub on its upper left appears to have noted

There are four confusingly similar moths on the wing at the moment, officially known as the Epirrita family but we can call them the Greys. We're not talking tea, politics or the North of England (I once stayed at the Grey Hotel in Grey Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which damaged my constant efforts at the time to counter those who condemned the North as grey, bleak and dour). No these are small and often prettily-patterned moths.

Plain and drab examples like this are apparently commoner in the South, ha ha

I say 'often' because they are infuriatingly variable, to an extreme degree in a world where patterns and colouring are notoriously unreliable. Even my Moths Bible assumes an air of despair when it says of them that the patterning 'can differ between the two forewings of the same individual'. And if you think I'm having my customary whinge about failing to ID such creatures successfully, read what else the Bible says:

The live males of each species can easily be identified by examination of the underside of the abdomen tip under a hand lens or low-powered microscope. This is facilitated by removal of some of the scales from the abdomen tip with a damp brush. Rather than man-handle live moths, another possibility is to anaesthetise them by placing them in ethyl acetate vapour until they are still. To confirm identity of the females requires examination of the genitalia.

Easy? Um.  Anyway, resisting the temptation to add to the world's mountain of quips about that recent best-selling sex book, here are some of my Epirrita in the pictures. I think that most of them are the November Moth with the odd Autumnal Moth. But if anyone reckons there is a Pale November Moth or Small Autumnal Moth among them, please let me know.

This is the one which I think could be an Autumnal Moth, cos of the size and positioning of it wing dots

Update: I meant to check out the meaning of Epirrita earlier but ran out of time. The very good moths website kept by Shandy Hall - Lawrence Sterne's fascinating vicarage - is excellent on definitions and relates this to both Greek and Latin words meaning 'streaming' and 'flowing', ascribing the name to the washed-out look of the moths' wings.  Many thanks, Shandy people.

Meet the Missus

Yesterday I featured the male Feathered Thorn with his fine antennae. Today his other half came calling. Compared with his flashy orange colouring, she often has the Quakerish costume of modest, delicate grey as shown below, but evidently she can be a saucebox as well. I am going by the gleam in her eye, above.

As I mentioned yesterday, her antennae are plain and decorous, unlike the fine, long ones of this minute brown micro, below. I spent ages trying to get the camera at an angle where the lens wasn't baffled by the reflective black plastic of the trap bowl where this mini creature was asleep. Finally, defying the risk of it waking with a start and speeding off, I lured it on to an eggbox fragment and into the light. Update: after consulting my Micro Bible, I think it's Caloptilia elongella, with its fine knee-breeches.

While engaged in these manoeuvres, I spotted a Red-green Carpet moth also on the bowl, in a position which looked intriguing. And then a poor old veteran which is now in the running for my 2013 Tattered Survivor Award.

Finally, who can resist a fine specimen of the Green-brindled Crescent? Not me.

RAF moths

The only 'jetplane' moth of early autumn flew in last night - a Feathered Thorn. It rests with its wings swept back like an RAF Vulcan bomber, uniquely among its contemporaries which either fold their wings over their bodies, hold them up like a butterfly or stick them out sideways like today's second subject, below.

This chap is a male, a fact I established by teasing him enough to make him show his feathered antennae, more elaborate than any TV aerial I have seen, but not enough to goad him into flying off before the photography session was done. Females have to make do with plain versions, perhaps because the hunting for partners by pheromone searching is done by the male.

I love these antennae, so here they are again.

And again:

The Feathered Thorn has another distinction among it autumn fellows: it is strikingly large, as I hope I illustrate below by the inclusion of one of my attractive thumbs. We're not talking hawk moths or anything like that, but he makes a welcome change from the middling-sized chestnuts and their pals.

Continuing the aircraft theme (and moth wing shapes have been studied by aircraft designers) here is another of last night's arrivals, a Plume moth. These always remind me of the gawky Lysander aircraft which used to rescue shot-down pilots or members of the French resistance in my 1/- War Picture Library comics. This one's got trouble with its right wingtip (left in the picture below) but that didn't stop it scooting off from its eggbox and banking low over a flowerbed.

The plumes are a growing family. Although a couple of them, the Gentian and Downland Plumes, are thought to have become extinct in the last half-century, more than three times that number of species new to the UK list have been discovered.  When it comes to telling them apart, however, I am Muggins. The best I can do is to suggest, from flight seasons, that this is either a Brown (my first choice), Dowdy or conceivably Mugwort Plume. Views from passing micromoth experts would be more than welcome.

Truly scrumptious

This morning's star moth comes with a moral which I've passed on before: just when things seem to be winding down...Shazaaaam! A blindingly excellent moth flies in and the show is back on the road.

That is certainly the case today, with this newcomer - a moth for which I have yearned since I first turned the light trap on eight years ago. Yes, dear reader, 'yearned' is not too strong a term. The moth may be classified as 'common' and my old Yorkshire expert Jax Westmoreland used to report them buzzing in at Scarborough while I sat sadly Marvel-less in Leeds. But this is the first I have ever seen.

It is self-evidently lovely but also has one of the most beautiful names in the rich nomenclature of UK moths: the Merveille du Jour or Marvel of the Day. Yes, we have to borrow from French to get the full effect, but that's no problem. One of the nicest names I can think of offhand, Catherine Fourmantel, belonged to the half-French actress friend in York of Lawrence Sterne, the Tristram Shandy funster.

Names are fascinating; I once did a couple of Radio 4 programmes on the subject which featured a workshop in London where people sang their names, and those of their significant others, in an astonishing variety of hums, growls and ecstatic moans.  And then there's the famous example of the narrator in Rebecca whose name is cited several times as central to her appeal to the tragic hero Max de Winter. Daphne du Maurier brilliantly makes it more beguiling by never revealing what it is.

Anyway, I'm only going on like this so that I have enough paragraphs to intersperse lots of pictures from my photo session with the Marvel this morning. Personally, I can't have too many and so yopu're going to have to put up with that too.

After the mingy population of only two moths on Tuesday night, the trap was abundant this morning. The Merveille du Jour was actually perched on the rim of the bulb-holder, rather than inside among the eggboxes, as her (or his) exalted status deserves. The greeny-grey colouring, dappled with black and white in the fashion of US Army camouflage, worked well to disguise the moth against the silvery-grey of the metal backdrop.

And what was in the eggboxes themselves?  More on that tomorrow.

When the light comes on again...

A dry night (although damp again this morning), and so the trap had a brief outing, shorter than usual because we were late back from a trip to Bath. I spent three-and-a-half very happy years working there on the Evening Chronicle, now a weekly newspaper but still very good, and know of no more beautiful city in the UK.

We didn't see any butterflies except on the porcelain of the James Giles collection on show at the Holburne museum, a familiar landmark but now with a striking and successful modern extension at the back. There were butterflies aplenty in Giles' designs but, more interestingly, a solitary caterpillar on one of the plates; good that some wealthy diner or other didn't mind being reminded of this earlier stage in the insects' life cycle, even if he or she wouldn't have wanted to meet one in their salad.

I tried to take a picture but the digital focus was baffled by the glass exhibition case. But Googling found me the 1755 plate above, from the 2011 London Ceramics Fair, which has a similar appearance. And of course the famous contemporary children's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar means that there is now unlikely to be shortage of larval porcelain, and plastic, for future collectors to amass.


And the trap?  Guess how many moths came to call.  Just two.  The familiar Beaded Chestnut, top below, which has been the commonest visitor for the last three weeks; and a Dark Chestnut with its conker-like, russet sheen. Update: sorry, it's a plain ornery Chestnut - many thanks to Ben in Comments. For a genuine Dark one, scroll back a few posts.

Sweepy clean

Trapping continues to be in abeyance because of rain, so let's look at flower seedheads for a change. They are remarkable things, from the sharply hooked teazle - still used in wool-combing - to the everyday but marvellous little parachutes of the dandelion.

But what is this one, high up in our cherry tree and snapped today in spite of the drizzle. Some unexpected growth on the plant? Or a passing, floating seedhead trapped in the branches?

Neither. The explanation is below. It's Martin's Myths today, not moths. We've had our chimney swept. The sweep is the sixth generation in his family and proudly carries a print on his van of the firm's gable-end advert in Gas Street, Oxford, many years since, when his branch of the family did the sweeping and their cousins were horse-slaughterers. The business was founded in 1813 and family lore records one incident in its earliest days when a Water Babies-style climbing boy was persuaded to join - but snatched back by his mother who found out just in time.

  Update: my mind is so off the moth ball (ha!) because of the weather that I forgot to mention the Chimney Sweeper moth. It's a dear little soot-black creature with curiously white wingtips which came to the trap in Leeds but has yet to make itself known here in Oxfordshire. I'll try to find my entry on it long ago - 2008 or 9 I think - but in the meantime here's a nice picture of one below, courtesy of the excellent website Wild about Britain to whom many thanks.

Peacocks RIP

Way back in April, in only my second Oxfordshire post, I described the awakening of three Peacock butterflies from hibernation in our shed. Here, alas, are two which haven't made it this year. They must have fluttered into a spider's web - observe the grimy remains - or roosted too close to the window and subsequent heat on the sunny autumn days which only recently gave way to rain.

Looking through the camera viewfinder, I was struck by the realism of the eyes, almost as if a face was peering back at me from the beyond. Or at least from the window sill. To mark the passing of the butterflies, I found a curly leaf and re-arranged it for this second picture in the shape of whatever you call the opposite of a smiley. Rather grimly, something seems to have eaten out the eye in the fragment of wing at the top centre. The Greek mythologists could have added this to the story of Juno and the Peacock to lend force to the moral about not whingeing.

I then re-arranged the leaf to cheer up the face after all since vast numbers of Peacocks and Small Tortoiseshells survive the long half-life of hibernation over winter. Their re-appearance on days of early  sunshine in the Spring, or during Spring cleaning, is part of life and lore in the UK. Among other things, it accounts for the theatrical tradition that the appearance of a butterfly in the auditorium before a play's run is an omen of good fortune. In reality, it is a testament to the value of big theatre curtains as a place for a Peacock to snuggle down.

Rain stops play

Traditional English rain has returned for the first time in quite a while, beading our washing line with drops, watering our baby lettuces and not particularly discombobulating the moths. Collecting our younger son from the train station last night, we picked up quite a few in the headlights along with the drizzle. They're protected by a waxy film which allows them to fly in the wet, so long as the rain isn't too poundingly heavy, as well as survive in their flimsy hidey-holes beneath leaves.

The trap is another matter. Although its inventors Mr and Mrs Robinson designed a brilliantly simple and effective rain shield, whose praises I have often sung before, I don't like leaving it out all night in the wet. So nothing to report this morning, and anyway we're getting ready to feast friends for lunch. But here's another raindrops picture which shows that spiders' webs are waterproof too.

Playboy moth - did Hefner know?

Two posts ago, Stephen in Comments kindly identified one of my many mystery micros as Ypsolopha sequella and in the process highlighted the rabbit's head marking which shows up when the moth is at rest. Here it is, above.

I hadn't noticed this striking bit of branding, in spite of the many weird comparisons which I make on the blog between moths and alien spacecraft, bits of leaf or Laura Ashley models, and it reminded me to keep my eyes wide open and my ageing brain alert.






Having done that, it occurred to me that Ypsolopha's pattern is actually more specific than any old bunny's; it's the Playboy symbol in moth form. The magazine was the height of soft porn when I was a nipper and its bunny stood for a particular - albeit not terribly appealing - way of life.


I wonder if its creator Hugh Hefner and Ypsolopha sequella ever met. Not a question I can answer, although Hefner's batting on at the age of 87. If anyone who knows him happens to stumble across this, maybe they could ask him.

By coincidence, the State Insect of California, home of the 'Playboy Mansion' in Beverley Hills, is the California Dog-face butterfly, below, whose forewing pattern is reckoned to resemble not a rabbit but a cartoon pooch.

Many thanks to www.bubblenews.com,  www.chelseasofnewyork.com and www.statesymbolsusa.org for my illustrations.

Brrr...

The temperature has dropped sharply, as predicted - hats off to the Met Office - and although this morning has brought a clear blue sky and brilliant sunshine, the trap was markedly less busy last night. Beaded Chestnuts predominate again, with a couple of Blair's Shoulder-knots and a Wainscot to add variety, but we are probably moving into sparser times.

That said, the micro Acleris ferrugana at the top is a very lovely creature, and it's nice to have an Angle Shades again, to illustrate the point I made two posts ago about their conventional pose; my picture above is a typical example. The unique wing shape is not the only distinction of this fine moth; look more closely at the blow-up to see the range and subtlety of its colouring.

To conclude: Penny noticed this curious growth on our magnolia - suggestive of several things including those rather unpleasant exhibitions of human corpses minus skin which toured the UK last year. Anyone know what this is, or what causes it?