Enemy No 1 (give or take the blackbirds)

The convention is to say: "I'm pleased to introduce you to my friend So-and-so", but I can't in all sincerity do that to my acquaintance above. I admire his cheek and, alas, his ingenuity, but he and a couple of blackbirds in our garden are a menace to my slumbering moths.

There are plenty of these about still; here's a selection below, and I want things to stay that way. I appreciate that it's the fledging season for birds with lots of hungry mouths to fill. But I play, and am winning, a determined game of hide-and-fail-to-seek, by secreting the moths, eggboxes or sometimes the whole inverted trap under bushes or in clumps of nettles and long grass.

Clockwise from top left: Gold Spot, RusticShoulder-knot, Orange Footman, Marbled Minor spp and another Rustic Shoulder-knot. Hope I've got those all right. Update: Not quite. Edward in Comments rightly corrects the last one to another Marbled Minor spp. I had failed to recall its smaller size.

I know that in some ways this is a meaningless if humane gesture, as the UK's birds eat incredible numbers of insects every day. Look, for example, at the mini-biography of a Blue Tit on the website of the British Trust for Ornithology. An average nest of 10 baby tits eats around 1000 caterpillars a day at this time of the year.

Here are some of their potential victims, safe at least for now in my trap. Although beautiful and graceful, the Common Wainscot is around every day in large numbers, so it is good to have a change with this boldly marked and less frequent relative, the Shoulder-stripe Wainscot.

And here's another newcomer for the year, a lovely and very newly-hatched Campion with its beautiful tracery of mauve:

A third debut: a Light Emerald, followed by a male Pale Tussock in a slightly different resting position from the usual 'cat stretch', and two oddly-shaped moths: the rakish Angle Shades (one of the commonest moths found by friends and family and photographed for me to to ID - the optimists!) and a Pale Prominent, weird in every way down to its snake's tongue tail.

I cannot resist the Elephant Hawk moths and here are three more; a beautiful example of the Small species and a couple of adjacent ordinary Elephants, like the Pink Arrows, were such an RAF team to exist.

Next we have a micro which I hope to ID shortly, with the help of that pronounced white dot on its head. The next one has me puzzled too, but I hope to sort it out by the end of the day. Update: I have tracked down the micro and it's Phtheochroa rugosana (imagine introducing someone with at name). And after much debate and help - see Comments and my Upper Thames Moths blog post here - it remains tantalising not quite definite; either a Treble-bar or, more probably, a Lesser Treble-bar. Many thanks to all who helped for your time and expertise.

And lastly, some of my other visitors whose pictures I am busily despatching to iRecord. I'm pretty sure that the one in the middle is a Hawthorn Shield Bug. Update:  I am wrong (again).  It's a Birch Shield Bug - but the very encouraging expert Maria Justamond said: 'Very close!'  Thank you!

Pining

Yesterday's bumper clutch of moths turns out to have brought me a third entirely new visitor, the Sloe Carpet, which I misidentified (with due hesitation) as the more common regular here, the Oak-tree Pug. Many thanks to Martin Townsend on the Upper Thames Moths blog for putting me right. On top of that, I have a second big crowd of arrivals this morning, starting with the most reticent Pine Hawk moth in my experience.

It had crammed itself so tightly into an eggbox cone that I thought, from a glimpse of the chequers on its wing's leading edge in my second photo below, that it might be a Scalloped Hazel, like the one which came here two nights ago. But a closer look revealed the unmistakeable, slender wing -hape of the hawk, whose streamlining resembles a jet fighter.

The moth took two whole minutes to warm up and fly off, briefly investigated by a robin which zoomed in from its watching position on an apple tree. The moth might have been too fast and jinky but I think that it was also too big. At any rate, the robin had second thoughts and remained on his fence post, maybe wondering about what might have been.

My second source of joy in this morning's catch was this very fine Puss Moth, below, especially after the incident last week when I found just one Puss Moth forewing and suspect the robins and blackbirds - extremely early risers - had arrived before me and found the insect roosting outside the trap. This one was safe inside, beneath one of the lower eggboxes, and admiringly attended by one of the web-weaving Ermine micros - tiny creatures whose pupating nests can envelop entire trees and sometimes parked cars.

You can see in the middle picture why members of this family of UK moths are called Puss and Kittens. The Puss moth also has the most extraordinary caterpillar, with a pair of whips on its tail to deter parasites such as the nasty ichneumon wasp. My younger son found one last year during our Ruby Wedding celebrations, which I take to be propitious. It's the lower one in the picture on the left; the top cattie is a Lime Hawk's which I found on the same occasion. It is in the final stages of its pre-pupating life, with a fine little blue horn on its tail.

Back at the trap this morning, I had the usual cluster of outsiders who preferred not to go inside including no fewer than three male Pale Tussocks. They were joined on the bulbholder by a Knot Grass and a Pebble Prominent.

I must go and make the morning tea now, but here are the other arrivals. I will hope to settle uncertain IDs a little later this morning and perhaps say a bit more about the moths.

Coronet - a handsome moth

Anania perlucidalis micro

I think that this and the moth below are the darker form combusta of the Clouded-bordered Brindle, which I don't recall visiting me before

As above

Eyed Hawk moth

Iron Prominent - one of three in the trap

Turnip moth, I think. Update: No, thanks to Edward in Comments - it's a Large Yellow Underwing. Silly me; though as I mention in Comments, these are scarcer down here than in Leeds where they arrived by the shedload, night after night.

Marbled Minor spp - a species divided into groups which are very hard to tell apart

Common Swift

Orang Footman, I think

And an unklnown caddis fly to finish up with

Guest star, plus a big supporting cast

The local moths continue to be excellently abundant on these warm nights but pride of place this morning goes to a visiting East Londoner. This is because it was sent by my  daughter-in-law who, although Mum to one of the country's most enthusiastic primary school entomologsists, is not keen on insects of any kind herself.

So it was brave of her to get this fine picture in their garden of the Mint Moth, Pyrausta aurata, a brightly-coloured micro-moth which nips around fragrant plants on sunny days. What's more, she's photographed it on a lovely background of a Potentilla flower. So a big thank you, Abi!

For the second time in a week, a new species has meanwhile visited here, the Alder moth in my second picture, a species which is only locally common. I know that it largely fits into the browny-blacky-grey spectrum but its colour and patterning is actually quite subtle and it stood out in the eggboxes as something which I hadn't seen before. The picture below shows it with its neighbouring guest, a Green Carpet, to give an idea of its size.

Actually, before I opened the trap, I spent several minutes inspecting its surroundings in the garden, in spite of the watchful presence of a blackbird whose early rising I must try to beat one of these mornings; I am afraid that I suspect that it finds some of the outlying moths well before I arrive. But here is a whole series of visitors who declined to actually enter the trap:

Scorched Wing with its dazzle camouflage

The lovely Silver-ground Carpet

Common Wainscot

Chinese Character aka the Bird-poo Moth

I'll have to check but I guess Oak-tree Pug

Lime-speck Pug - one I can do

Garden Pebble - the micro Evergestis forficalis

On the bottom of the bulbholder, meanwhile, was one of my favourite regulars, the Figure of 80 moth, making its debut this year. Harking back to my musings yesterday on anthropomorphism, there is always an appeal in animals whose patterns resemble something human - like the pronounced comma on the butterfly of that name. The moth really does look as though it was number 80 in a record-and-release programme organised by scientists.

We are by no means finished, so I hope you have time and patience. This is one of the year's spikes for moths, to use a term current in the coronavirus vocabulary, and it is sometimes possible for even the most enthusiastic moth-watcher to feel a little overwhelmed. But here we go, starting with the year's first Peppered Moth, an extremely famous creature which has reams of space on the internet because of its role in natural selection and discussions relating thereto. The first picture is a rare example of the black bowl's effect on the camera working to advantage, making the moth almost celestial rather than blurred. I enticed the sleepy creature on to an eggbox fragment for the second photo. The melanic or dark version which is at the centre of the Darwinian issue also visits me here, but not as often as the standard one.

Next, we'll have some shining ones, partly illuminated by sunrise in a cloudless sky and partly by their reflective and refractive wing scales. The Elephant Hawk in the first picture doesn't have these, so he or she is relying solely on the sun. There were two in the trap along with a Poplar Hawk, which means that by only 20 May, I have had all my regular hawks. Only the Privet, Pine and Hummingbird remain to join the party.

The Gold Spot below is an exquisite though common moth and below that, here is a Burnished Brass of the form aurea with the central brown band unbroken by the greenery-yallery gold. The light in this picture shows up a pattern on the brown which resembles the Inky Flower, a species dreamed up by my granddaughter for an online school exercise in which the children had to invent their own plant.

The Spectacle Moth is another of my all-time favourites, especially when I get a picture like this:

It takes me back to only the second-ever post on this blog, 12 years ago - sobering thought - in Leeds. As you can see, I mentioned ID issues then, as I still do today.

The Spectacle doesn't wear spectacles and its 'eyes' are not eyes but probably 'surprise' camouflage. The real peepers are just below.  Here is the moth from two more conventional angles. It was a fine, freshly-emerged example.

Yet another favourite was out in force, the White Ermine, and here are two of them making sure that the species continues to flourish while a third looks discreetly away. Mind you, there was a spy at work, apart from myself. The second picture shows the head and antennae of an interested ichneumon wasp.

Still they come. Here is a very smartly patterned Knot Grass followed by an Oak-tree Pug (I think) and, in the bowl, that lovely moth, the Scorched Carpet. So today we have a Scorched Carpet and a Scorched Wing; and the weather looks as though it's going to be scorching too.

Bringing up the rear: another pug which also looks like an Oak-tree to me, but I will check, one of the dark and ferrous versions of the Marbled Minor,  a Square-spot Rustic with its square spots,  a Shears with its nippers pointing downward on the wings, a Light Brocade and a Poplar Kitten. Update: this final pug is actually a new arrival for me; a Sloe Pug, kindly identified by Martin Townsend on the ever-wondrous Upper Thames Moths blog.

Phew!  You made it.  Well done and well done the moths as well.