Moustachio moth

If moths could comment on human beings, there would no doubt be many equivalents of myself who looked at us despairingly and threw in the towel when it came to telling people apart. I find many categories of UK moth with differences in patterning so subtle that I fail to distinguish them time and again, though I do try, honest. But, as Penny will tell you, I often have the same problem with human beings, even when I have met them previously.

Which is all a long way of celebrating and thanking distinctive moths such as the Buff Ermine shown above and especially the wonderfully strongly-marked, gloriously-moustachioed version of it shown in the first picture with a standard companion and in the second with a Beautiful Golden Y (I am fairly sure; the distinction between the Beautiful and Plain Golden Ys is a classic example of wobbly ground. Thy are seriously alike and to compound my anxiety, Dave Wilton, the retired flight traffic controller who is one of my most helpful experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog, says there that he has plenty of Plain Golden Ys in his garden in Buckinghamshire but only usually gets one visit a year from a Beautiful one. Ah me, but I think that I am right.

Elsewhere in the trap, I was very pleased to welcome my first Treble Brown Spot on home ground. You may recall that I found my first-ever only last week in Suffolk but this is the debut here in Oxfordshire. Not only that, but it perched on the trap's transparent cowl and so I was able to photograph it from below (below).

For the rest, the trap was very full of moths, mostly familiar and ranging from the little micro below, which I hope to ID over morning tea, to a slumbering Privet Hawk. 

Early dawn means that the moths are often more wakeful when I reach them and one bonus of this was the chance to get an unusual picture of a lively Flame, a species which almost always appears at rest like this:

This one's liveliness enabled me to get this bigger picture, below, which shows more of the pattern - and also, I think but I am having to rely on my iPad Mini for pictures at the moment so the quality is not the best, it looks as though the little 'eye' contains a scrap of that tiny piece of rare UK moth colour, blue. Much like the Straw Dot which I featured the other day.  Once equipped with my camera again, I will try to make this clearer, especially as blue is my favourite colour.  

Here are some of the other slumberers:

Clouded Border

A handsome Snout

Silver Y getting ready for take-off

My thumb and a Middle-barred Minor (I think)

A Marbled/Tawny/Rufous Minor, left, and (I think) a Least Minor

A Turnip Moth, I think, with its closely-wrapped wings

Home again

Back home, and familiar friends are waiting. I can never resist taking photographs of hawk moths and these two Poplars were lustrous specimens, newly-emerged by the look of it, a month after my first examples came calling this year. I am surprised not have come across Poplar Hawk caterpillars during my long years of light-trapping. Nature is very good at hiding her treasures, even the common ones.

My second, beautiful, silvery moth, was the first ever to settle on the small woven carrier handle of the light-trap bowl, which provides a change from my usual eggbox backgrounds, much as I like the differences between the shades and brands of those. I always have difficulty distinguishing between the various types of 'Beauty' species of which I am sure that this is one. I will go for Willow Beauty while checks continue over morning tea.

Above is a delightful micromoth which I met in Suffolk, but a little better-focussed this time: Pseudargyrotoza conwagana. And to the left a pretty but slightly tattered Common White Wave, I think - as with the Beauty, there are several very similar moths in this category and - as regular visitors know - I am often wrong.

Now we have a most enjoyable oddity in the UK moth world, the Barred Straw which rests in a mini-version of the stance familiar in the Poplar Haw, with the hindwings tucked under the forewings, the latter held well-forward. In the Poplar Hawk, actually, the hindwings often stick out in front of the forewings; but the Barred Straw has the edge in terms of looking like an alien. I put this photo on my Instagram feed, suggesting that it was the new leader of Mrs May's Brexit negotiating team. For all the good that they will do our lives and economy, and especially our children's and grandchildren's, it might as well be.

I shall report back on this next moth shortly; I was fairly sure that I spotted it in the Micromoth Bible last night just before I fell asleep and the book slid off the bed, but I need to double-check and don't want to disturb Penny quite yet. I did, however, prudently type in the name of the second micro below before conking out. I think that it is Eudonia lacustrata. Update: after consulting the books and my What Moth Is That? page, which was surprisingly useful, I am pretty sure that the first one is Udea lutealis, but I'm double-checking with the friendly experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog.

Finally, a sight which I did not want to see. We get a lot of birdstrike on our windows here, largely I think because we have a lot of birds. We also have a lot of windows and their glazing is such that you can watch a bird hopping about directly outside, and even move around yourself, without its being able to see. This is great but birdstrike is the downside. Poor Great-spotted Woodpecker. RIP.

Liberal Moths, huzza!

Hooray! Let's start the day with some Liberal Democrat moths to celebrate the party's increase - small, but little acorns... - and the influence which it may be able to wield in a balanced Parliament with no overall majority for either of the Big Boys/Girls. It is a shame to lose Nick Clegg and Greg Mulholland but great to welcome back Vince Cable, Jo Swinson and others and to see the party win more than two million votes. There are great opportunities and perhaps the foolishness of wanting to leave the EU will become clearer. Roll on by-elections!

More welcome orange and yellow in my second picture, courtesy of Michael Robinson, a fellow-guest at the weekend birthday party in Suffolk who kindly recorded the moth-related goings-on with a better camera and steadier hand than my own. He has kindly agreed to my showing some of the results. Trapping restarted here at home last night, when the weather finally decided to turn dry and less cold, but in the meanwhile here is a small Robinson Supplement to my Suffolk moths. I wonder if Michael is related to the inventor of the Robinson trap? I forgot to ask him.

He was certainly interested in it and captured the magic but short-lived moment when the mercury vapour bulb flickers into action and shines with an eerie pink. This soon gives way to a cold, slightly blueish light of great intensity. The idea that enthusiasts and interested outsiders can sit round a trap in the evening and watch the moths zig-zag in is a non-starter so far as I am concerned. Dark glasses would be essential. As it is, many people cannot use Robinson traps because of the effect on neighbours, although the less powerful actinic traps provide a substitute.

The morning after is another matter, so far as 'social mothing' is concerned, as the eggboxes are examined as in the top picture on this post and people gather round to examine the catch. If you look closely, you will see that the joy of having a large moth perching on your hand is by no means confined to small people such as my grandchildren. Here is that phenomenon in close-up:

The 90-year-old Birthday King, in whose honour the weekend was held, was especially pleased. Here, meanwhile, are Michael's studies of a Buff Ermine, a Swallow Prominent, the Poplar Hawk after release and a Setaceous (meaning 'bristly' but, as I have often asked, why?) Hebrew Character.

And finally a Light Emerald and that most excellent moth, the Burnished Brass, to round things off. Many thanks, Mike.

Plenty about - including TWO new

This is an anachronistic post in that the moths featured arrived here last Thursday and Friday night. In  the morning I was preoccupied by the jumbo visitor, the Privet Hawk moth, and then we were off to Suffolk. The last three days have been devoted to my moth-y discoveries there, before they went cold. So now we are on a journey back into the past, or at least just under a week ago.

The delay has been worthwhile in that my initial assumption that these 'leftovers' were run-of-the-mill has proved wildly mistaken Two of them are moths which I have not met before. They are shown above, first a Brown Silver-line which is common but had somehow passed me by in both Leeds and Oxfordshire; and secondly, the intricately beautiful Toadflax Pug which I ignorantly thought was one of the Carpets until the experts on the Upper Thames Moth blog gently put me right. 

'Toadflax' is one of those words which inspires you to Google - in my ignorance again, I did not know what sort of plant it was. Courtesy of the Wildlife Trusts, here is a small photo. I recognise it now from countless wastelands and patches of scrub.

Back to the moths snd the next two are ones which I was to meet at Cavendish Hall, an irresistable, shining Burnished Brass and a Poplar Grey.

Next follows a gem-like Pseudargyrotoza conwagana, sorry for the blurring, and then a favourite of mine: the Lesser Angle Shades, a moth which I love dearly because it has quite a substantial patch of blue. I praised the Straw Dot yesterday for its minuscule amount of this very rare colour in UK moths. The LAS is second in this only to the fabulous (but as yet unseen by me) Clifden Nonpareil.

Here's a nice big beast meanwhile: a female Pale Tussock, bigger than the male to a degree often seen in Bamforth's seaside postcards which were printed in my old beat of Holmfirth. Here she is, on her own and then beside her spouse, with a Bamforth image left, to test if my comparison finds favour with you.

Next comes our friend the Snout, nothing new but I always like running their photographs, especially when they turn up their 'nose' - actually palps - at my nightie.  Then a Shoulder-striped Wainscot and an Orange Footman (soon to be re-encountered at Cavendish Hall. Both times I mistook the moth for the closely related but later-flying Dingy Footman but Tony Prichard, Suffolk's county moth recorder, kindly put me right).

Finally, two more favourites to wrap things up: the fagend-like BUff Tip and a Small Magpie micro. It is ages since I have seen a macro Magpie moth which were very common when I began this hobby as a schoolboy in Herefordshire. I hope to meet one again as they are interesting moths which formed the basis of a famous experiment in genetics by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, a surgeon and entomologist who was brother to the more famous Maynard.