Home and abroad

As predicted in the last post, we went back to the Blenheim butterfly house yesterday with our Sri Lankan friends, so here's another dab of exotica to make a change from the moths. The picture above is one of several striking examples of camouflage; the slightly open wings of an Owl Butterfly - Caligo memnon -  have an astonishingly exact colour match with the trunk of a small banana tree. Here's a picture from a little further away, below.

As shown in the last post, the Owl has a further defence against predators on its underwings - a large and intimidating eye. Contrarywise, the remarkable Leaf Butterfly, Kalima inachus, has its concealment camouflage on the undwerwing and the surprise - Boo! Go away, hungry bird! - on its topside.

This is much less often seen than the underwing because the insect prefers to fold its wings tightly closed when at rest. Congratulations and thanks, therefore, to my older son's Mum-in-law, Radha Dharmaratnam, for this great little filmet showing the unexpected azure blue and gold.  I hope that it works on your browser.

Radha also spotted this mating pair of what I'm pretty sure are Blue Diadem butterflies, Hypolimnas misippus - a species which led to this interesting sighting a couple of years ago by Mark Griffiths who submits moth reports to the Upper Thames Moths blog. He told the related Butterfly Sightings page: 

Visiting Woodstock, Oxon on Saturday (31st August) we were having lunch when a black and white butterfly, vaguely like a White Admiral, appeared flying around the flower baskets. We saw it a few times, flying up and down the street, including when it was flying around the roof of the Town Hall. Clearly an exotic it must be an escapee from the Blenheim Palace butterfly house. Although I didn't get a close view, when we were about 10 feet away I was able to make a tentative identification. I've been in contact with Blenheim and they have supplied me with a list of species they have. After consultation with my wife (who has better eyesight!) we believe it was a male Blue Diadem butterfly, Hypolimnas misippus.

Back home, the trap has welcomed the first of the Thorn family for 2015, this jagged edged example of an August Thorn, below. Update: Sorry, although an August Thorn would have been a month early in terms of its name, this is an even more anachronistic moth: a September Thorn. Many thanks to Steve Trigg, eminent commentor on the Upper Thames Moths blog, for drawing my attention to a very good comparison there. The distinguishing marks of the September Thorn are that it holds its wings higher than the August when at rest, as in my picture, and the two bands are closer at th lower edge of the forewing. Much appreciated. It was joined by the classic grey-brown, much dotted and dashed, middling-sized chap in the next photograph. Could this be that well-named species mentioned by my Commentor two days ago - the Uncertain. I am not certain, but inclined to say Yes.

Here's a very nice orangey Dun-bar, too, quite different from the dun form shown the other day

And finally two old familiars. I can never resist a Buff Ermine, especially when posed on my lovely pyjamas. And this Dark Arches found a nice spot to illustrate a modest British version of the tropical camouflages shown above.

Tropical Oxford

I thought it was time for an exotic interlude amid the daily moths. So if you are mildly startled by my main picture, above, that is the reason.

But surely such glorious creatures do not roam the Oxfordshire countryside? Aah, I wish. But they do roam the excellent, if quite pricey, realm of Blenheim Place. Or at least, the butterfly and ornamental finch house.

I normally have mixed feelings about such places as the price to pay for close examination of their occupants, which is terrific, especially for young people, is too often the sad sight of captive insects fluttering vainly at the windows or muslin screens. But Blenheim seems to have sorted out this problem.

We went with some Estonian friends and their children and I was kept too busy to ask the staff how they managed the butterflies so well. But we're off there again today, this time with some friends from Sri Lanka, so I'll see if I can find out. I'm also hoping that the Sri Lankans may identify some of the butterflies.

I suspect that part of the answer is a carefully-chosen selection of nectaring plants, supplemented by chunks of fruit as shown below.  Isn't the Leaf butterfly in the second picture a wonderful example of mimicry. Small wonder that Alfred Russel Wallace's study of such creatures on his travels in Malaysia and Indonesia led him independently to the same conclusions about natural selection as Charles Darwin.

I was lucky enough to see butterflies like this in their natural habitat when I followed Wallace's footsteps on an expedition to Sulawesi (formerly Celebes) some 30 years ago. It is captivating o see such magnificent creatures soaring on the fringe of the rain forests, or 'mud-puddling' in their hundreds, maybe thousands, as they draw up salt and other minerals from damp sandbanks along the jungle rivers.

The butterfly above - underside in the top picture and topside in the second one - reminded me of those days and was my favourite at Blenheim.  To finish up with, here is one of the Tropical House's finches - presumably a species which doesn't eat butterflies.

Thumbnail

Second only to my bungled IDs, the main (and fully justified) criticism I get from readers here is about the lack of scale. Are the moths I feature large or small, tiny or vast? I take the point but I don't want (and admittedly partly can't be bothered) to stick a ruler in every photograph. Instead, I hope that my fascination with eggboxes will gradually become general. Once you know how big they are, and the details of their various features of recesses and cones, the size of the moths should no longer be an issue.

I also try to include helpful features in the background, such as other dozing insects, my pyjamas or, fairly frequently, my fingers and thumbs. Today's top picture, for example, shows that tiny dagger of a moth, Catoptria pinella (if I am not mistaken) with my thumb lurking behind. A little distant, I know, but it gives you a notion.

Feeling specially helpful, I've then combined the picture above of lovely Acleris forsskaleana in a typical eggbox folding-groove (typical to us eggbox savants, that is), with one below taken from a distance and showing the whole box. Isn't he or she minute? 

And so to some other visitors - ID-ed like yesterday's by captions which one and all are invited to check, confirm or put right.

Dun-bar

Dusky Sallow - pretty moth

Lesser Cream Wave

Pyrausta aurata - slightly different from Penny's birthday Pyrausta purpuralis

Small Emerald - large thumb

Now for one or two curious recent sights in the trap. First, a wasp briefly paid court to a lovely Marbled Green but a love match was not to be.

Then a socking great micro - one of the Crambyds? - appeared to have similar ambitions towards an Elephant Hawk:

A Poplar Hawk - one of many which visit me at the moment - looped the bulb flex loop

Picnic mugs left over from the day before provided a cheery background for a Coronet:

And finally, here's an unexpected guest: a Meadow Brown butterfly which got muddled up between day and night. Note, for those who often ask the differences between moths and butterflies, here is one: butterflies always hold their wings like this, folded vertically above their bodies. A few moths do the same, but most prefer the flat-n-folded-back look. Update: check out the very interesting points made on some of the above in Comments.

Catching up

I'm just going to have a bit of a catch-up today, featuring recent arrivals in the trap which I've failed to catalogue to date. The first is that pretty and prettily-named micro-moth the Beautiful Chine-mark. By contrast, below, is the darker attractions of the Shaded Broad-bar.

 

The next moth, the Common Rustic (or Lesser Common; they are indistinguishable to the layman or woman), comes in a bewildering range of patterns and seems to me to deserve a more inspiring name. Mind you, you could say that common and lesser common rustics of the human kind have been unfairly dismissed and scorned in ages past.

The Dark Arches, which is the subject of the next two pictures, will remind anyone with connections to Leeds of those famous cellars, tunnels and gloomy labyrinths beneath the Queen's Hotel which bear the same name. This is a very common arrival at the moment in the eggboxes, which are crawling with moths in the benignly warm nights of July. But its complicated and graceful patterns should not be overlooked just on that account.

I'll add the rest with simple captions because, once again, the time for making early morning tea is well past. Help with those questioned-marked much appreciated as always.Yet more moths arrived last night, in large numbers, so the game of catch-up will go on.

Udea olivalis

Clouded Brorder

Buff Arches

Poplar Grey

Anania coronata

Small Dotted Buff

Coronet?

Another Poplar Grey

Blue-bordered Carpet?

Marbled Minor?

Dark Umber?

Ordinary guys (and gals)

It's easy but not really excusable to overlook the common, everyday moths which visit the trap at this time of year. Here are some of them.

I can't count how many Mother of Pearl micros come every night at the moment. But I am sorry as they flutter away - they are very easily disturbed - because each one has the lovely sheen which gives it its name; the same iridescence which you find in sea shells.

The Large Yellow Underwing is another humdrum caller. I have even watched a blackbird eat one with equanimity although that was in Leeds where the LYU came in hordes. I'm featuring this one, though, because I don't recall seeing one of this 'dark' strain with such bright, prominent wing spots. Maybe it is a form which is a little less common than the norm.

Six Poplar Hawk Moths in the trap last night signals another phenomenon of this moth-cluttered month: the second generation. These two Pebble Prominents are in much too good a condition to have been flying since May. Welcome, young moths!