As I was saying...

...the rain continues to patter down and so I continue to catch up. Here are the remainder of the backlog of moths which streamed in earlier in the week, starting with an impressive pair of large moths which are fine practitioners of dazzle camouflage. I've already featured the Puss Moth which goes for black and white lines and a certain filmy transparency. Joining it here is the Peppered which prefers dots and dashes.

It is a famous exemplar of Darwin's theory in that specimens found in industrial areas tend to be melanistic, or wholly dark so that their camouflage works better on sooty surfaces. The doctor and entomologist Sir Cyril Clarke plotted a parallel between the decline of melanistic Peppereds and the rise of centenarian humans in the UK which played a part in the long campaign against pollution.

Another pretty example of black-and white patterning is the Coronet, above, which has visited in some numbers over the last week. The Puss moth meanwhile has a family of smaller relatives known, inevitably, as the Kittens. Here below is a Poplar Kitten with its distinctive grey waistcoat.

The fashion tastes of the next, very fine moth extend more to fur. Here is a Pale Tussock, showing its habit of resting with its front legs stretched out, like someone stretching before getting up and then finding themselves frozen in that position.

A smaller exponent of fur, or at least a woolly scarf, is the Marbled Brown below and then we get on to a couple of moths whose IDs may need help, to be certain, from one of my friendly expert commentors.

I think that these two are respectively a Knot Grass, with that distinctive sort-of V marking at the centre of the folded wings, and posssibly a Poplar Grey, although the second one may well be a second Knot Grass. Help much appreciated.

I am not finished yet - there are another ten or so to get on record, but your patience will be getting strained. So I will finish with a run of tiny micros, little morsels of moths which in many cases are scarecly a centimetre long. I don't have much to say about them (yet) because I am learning, but their names tend to be as long as they are short and so fill a fair amount of space.

Pseudargyrotoza conwagana - a little jewel

Phtheochroa rugozana - amazing muddle of colours and shapes

Acleris aspersana - one of the tortrix micros, named from the Latin for 'twister'

Cochylimorpha straminea - you can call it the Cappuccino Moth if you like

Aphomia sociella - the Bee Moth, so called because it often starts life as an
egg laid in a bumblebee's nest

Either Scrobipalpa acuminatella or
Aproaerema anthyllidella, both v common

Cnephasia, prob communana but would need dissecting to be sure and I
am not a moth surgeon

Celypha lacunana. And that's it for now.
Final episode tomorrow

Moth jam

I have been busier than ever with the moths this year, but there have been plenty of enjoyable butterfly encounters in the sunny weather too. This year's tally consists of Brimstone, Orange Tip, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Holly Blue and the Green-veined White, above, which accompanied a group of us along a wooded ride above the river Cherwell yesterday.

Headlines about butterfly numbers bat too and fro in the media, and in a somewhat calmer way among enthusiasts, with all sorts of things blamed or praised for their supposed rise and fall. I am insufficiently scientific to join the debate with any credibility but actually seeing butterflies in the UK comes down to one thing in my experience: the sun. If it shines, out they come. If it doesn't, in they stay.

The rest of this post is going to resemble our weekly shopping list, I fear, since overnight rain has at last given me a chance to catch up on my mothy backlog. First, here's the Figure 80, above, with its distinctive wing mark shown close-up. It's much like those scrambled numbers you have to puzzle over online when proving to a suspicious website that you're not a robot spammer.

Next comes the Barred Hook-tip, an unusual moth for this part of the world and one of a trio which I mentioned briefly on the excellent Upper Thames Moths blog where my errors are regularly corrected in a kindly fashion by experts. The value of this process was shown by a prolonged debate over my next moth below: was it a Pale-shouldered Brocade (common) or a Dog's Tooth (rarer here)? After admirably careful scrutiny and a flurry of emails, the experts - including my very own corrector here, Ben Sale of Essex Moths - declared in favour of the PSB. But Update: one of them, however, had his doubts which you can read about in the fascinating (to moth enthusiasts) comment thread on my UTM post here. So the jury is actually out. But the moth has flown.

A palely pretty visitor now, the Clouded Silver with its sooty wingpatches, 

followed by two of the slightly larger regulars, a Buff Tip and an Angle Shades, the first resembling one of Sir Winston Churchill's cigar stubs and the second a jet fighter.

Talking of aircraft metaphors, the next moth, a Common Marbled Carpet, is one of the occasional visitors to the trap which crash-land and dislocate their wings. Most seem to recover, I'm glad to say.

Another Carpet next, the delicate Silver-ground, followed by a Lime-speck Pug, well-named and a rival to the blob-like Chinese Character in resembling a bird dropping on the trap. There are several genuine droppings, mostly from a dangerously inquisitive robin, a type of bird known to have entered moth traps with mayhem ensuing.

Now for The Flame, a regular visitor but this year's first, with a way of tightly hunching its wings so that it resembles a chip of wood. 

And here are the beautifully-patterned and -coloured Small Phoenix and the remarkable Scorched Wing whose variant of dazzle camouflage has my eyes adjusting focus in vain. Both of these would be post-topping picture stars in quieter circumstances and the fact that they are so far downpage underlines again the sheer quantity of moths flying in.

The next moth has also been the subject of debate on Upper Thames Moths with several of us mistaking it for the very similar Campion when it is in fact a Lychnis. We voted in the district and European elections yesterday and it might be considered my Election Moth with the X-shape on its wings resembling our crude and disproportionate voting system.

I have tested your patience and will stop soon although there are plenty more moths to come - all of them from last Tuesday night. Here for now is a Marbled Minor with its delicate pattern including a curious pink blob - was God a bit clumsy with his paintbrush while painting an Elephant Hawk? I ask, in the manner of a 19th century vicar.

So, to conclude, the latest arrival from the very handsome Prominent family: a Swallow Prominent seen a little unusually from above with its veins of white forming the sort of curious geometry which can also be seen from above if you fly over the Andes' Nazca lines.

My moth and my knee

Many years ago when I was young, there was a film called 'Claire's Knee' which I never saw but liked the sound of. It was a time of unusual and strangely attractive film names. Another famous one, which I did see and enjoy, was called 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'.

I tell you this because my own knee, or part of it, features in today's post because it was the most convenient bit of pink background (along with one of my shapely fingers) for this lovely pink moth: the Small Elephant Hawk. This is a rarer relation of the Elephant Hawk, a neat little cousin which looks like a training fighter plane compared with the real grown-up thing.  My friendship with both varieties goes back to the dawn of time, when the kindly Curator of Natural History at Leeds City Museum, John Armitage, encouraged me and my brother to look for their caterpillars on the clumps of Rosebay Willowherb which fringe the city's ring road in Meanwood and Adel.

This was a comparatively rare example of an adult telling a child something which turned out to be exactly right. 'Seek and ye shall find,' said John in effect. We did and did. The caterpillar is worth finding too, for its uncanny resemblance to an elephant's trunk. This accounts for the moths' names, rather than an association with the pink elephants which we are supposed to see when drunk.

Hello Blue Eyes

This rakish-looking character hides a dramatic secret and one which is perhaps as beautiful as the peacock, below, which tried to woo me on my birthday treat in the excellent Harcourt Arboretum which Oxford University has established at Nuneham Courtenay, using the long-standing plantings of the Liberal dynasty of Harcourts who once lived there (and in various other mansions in Oxfordshire and elsewhere).

The Eyed Hawk Moth has the advantage of the peacock, too, in the element of surprise. Familiarity is part of that issue, so far as the famous bird is concerned, but even when his stupendous tail is folded, the peacock struts about in a fabulous waistcoat of iridescent blues and greens.

The moth's eyes either have to be coaxed into appearing - regard my beautiful finger in action below, or triggered by a threat. Studies have shown that the sudden appearance of the eyes, accompanied by a deliberate rocking motion by the moth, can deter attack by hungry birds.

This question of 'eyes' is fascinating for what it says about animal vision and our anthropomorphic tendencies (which reach a sort of peak in the books of Beatrix Potter). Deterrent colouring is hugely varied in moths and includes a lot of quite simple versions such as bright red or yellow. Has the sophistication of the 'eye', which is widespread among insect wing patterns, developed because it really does look to non-human predators like an eye, and possibly one of a counter-predator? Or is it the concentration of different bright colours in a tight space which scares the potential attacker away?

I was doubly lucky last night with my Eyed Hawk, which brings my tally of hawkmoths this year to five different species, the others being Privet, Poplar, Lime and Small Elephant with the Large Elephant certain to join them soon.  Look at the background of the picture above. Yes, there were two in the eggboxes. I think from the size of their bodies that they are females, so I may get some eggs to add to my little nursery of Emperor moth caterpillars which are munching their way through ever-increasing gifts of hawthorn leaves.

Finally, here's an Eyed Hawk head-on.  Don't worry about prey getting this view, though. Like the Emperor moth, adult hawk moths in the UK do not feed and therefore lead sadly short lives.

One other point of interest about the Eyed Hawk: it is not a moth calculated to appeal to Alex Salmond. Although it is common throughout England up as far as Cumbria, only one has ever been recorded in Scotland.

Upper House

The beautiful ermine moths whose livery resembles the collars of peers' robes are among a host of new arrivals at the moment. Our lovely sunny days are being followed by warm nights and this is moth heaven, and paradise too for those of us who pursue them.

Here in the first picture are the two main ermines side by side, the White and the Buff, similar-looking but with somewhat different habits. While the White Ermine dines helpfully for the gardener on nettles and docks, the Buff is prepared to tackle honeysuckle, birch and hop. Perhaps that is why, on average, they are a little bigger.

Mmmm...honeysuckle with wild plum - scrumptious! I think I'll have a nap

The dots and dashes on ermines vary in number and size and there is a very rare White Ermine variety which is mostly black, like the bad fairy in a children's tale. This variation in moth patterning is a well-known headache for those enthusiasts who struggle with making identifications. Regular visitors will know very well that these include me.

Another family which is starting to visit the trap shows the same like of consistency: the Swift moths. The first to come has been the Common Swift, whose distinctive wing markings vary strikingly, as in the next three photographs. All three moths are the same species, the plain, Jane Eyre-like one being a female.

She is a little reminiscent of the elegant grey Muslin moth which has been around for over a month now and is still visiting. Swifts are marginally less appealing to the hard-working gardeners; their caterpillars dine off the roots of the herbaceous plants which we struggle so hard to tend.

A final point of interest about the White Ermines: they have taken over from the Brimstone moth as the most common species to be found snoozing near the trap rather than in it, tucked up on a leaf or in a crack between wall stones. I have been pondering similarities between them, of which the most obvious is their shared light colour. In other ways they are very different, the Ermine's having plump bodies and sleeping very soundly, while the Brimstones are slender and comparatively flighty.