High Noon

This bulletin is a week old because I didn't have time to write it before we left for what proved to be one amazing, heatwave week beside the sea on the Cardigan/Ceredigion coast. More of our adventures there tomorrow, but meanwhile here's a lovely selection of moths which arrived the day after P's birthday, on the 17th July.

My favourite is the lovely Beautiful China-mark, above, a very well-named micro-moth whose official Linnaean title I had better add, since that is the form for micros: Nymphula nitidulata. Not as evocative but attractive in its own way; maybe sounds like a Greek or Italian nightclub singer.

Next we have a similarly delicate moth but a macro this time, although not a lot bigger than the BC-m: a 

Blue-bordered Carpet, and then a series of graceful Laura Ashley arrivals, appropriately for P who looked lovely in Laura Ashley dresses during our courting days.

A Common Emerald

Swallowtailed

Brimstone

Not sure but think it's a Dark Umber female

Next, we have a Buff Arches resting with assorted companions on the moth trap's bulbholder and then below another Swallowtailed along with an opalescent Mother-of-Pearl micro, a Muslin Footman and a Ribboned Wave. As you can see, July is High Noon for UK moths and a whole stream of other visitors follows.

Small Scallop

Lesser Cream Wave

Least Carpet

Vapourer - an eye-catching moth whose caterpillar I found a year or two ago on the big walnut which is home to our grandchildren's treehouse.

The chunky micro Calamatropha paludella

I think that this is a Large Twin-spot Carpet snuggling up towards another Muslin Footman

Shaded Broad-bar

A second generation Early Thorn alongside a September Thorn (which starts flying in July in spite of its name)

And finally, to round off an excellent night's guest-list, a Dusky Sallow.

Birthday bonanza

The moths have done their birthday best for Penny again, with this lovely Pine Hawk agreeing to pose on our towering chicory plant, my favourite 'weed'.  The early sun presaged a beautiful day with the warmth persisting late into the evening as we sat by the dying embers of a barbecue with the flame from the candle on the table giving scarcely a flicker.

I photographed the hawk from both sides and the shot of its underwing shows from the slender black-and-white fringe to its wings what a fresh hatch it must be. The third photo shows it as it appeared when I opened the trap, sharing its eggbox with an Elephant and a Poplar Hawk

Contrast it with the veteran in my fourth photo which arrived in the trap this morning, along with another very fine gathering of moths to mark P's birthday + 1. Here's a moth which has been around a bit.

Its wings remain happily unribboned compared with some of the tattered veterans which still manage to fly but their covering of scales has worn very thin. You can still see the powerful lines of the moth whose sharply raked wings resemble a fighter jet or one of the more stylish of the paper darts which we made at school.

At the other end of the size range, I found the three attractive micro moths shown below: a well-named mini-royal among moths, Pyrausta purpuralis,  a Tortrix which I will ID later and a European corn-borer, rather an off-putting name for an interesting moth which is only locally common, fortunately as it can be a pest on crop stems.

In the grass by the trap was this season's first Yellowtail, obligingly showing the reason for its name which it often conceals when at rest. Any sort of threat is quick to bring the tail out but you usually have to be nifty with the camera (which I am seldom) to catch it before the moth tucks it back in.

Finally, some pretty Laura Ashley moths -  the curiously-named Single-dotted Wave, a tiny creature for a macro-moth, and that very long-standing favourite of mine, the Swallowtailed; a perfect example and one which has been around a bit. They arrived together.

Peachy

A very long-standing favourite flew in last night, or rather two of them did. The Peach Blossom's lovely pattern and colouring first blew me away as a schoolboy aged nine or ten and I've always been delighted when it has paid me a visit since. It's common but doesn't come every year, so two in one night is a feast.

They had decided to sleep on the cone of the trap's bulbholder which is made of black plastic and sends the camera haywire. I enticed them off with the leaf in the photos but they were very quickly getting jumpy - some of the blurring is less due to my incompetence than the way that they were exercising their wings. Both had flown off within a couple of minutes, thankfully un-noticed by birds.

There were a lot of other moths in the eggboxes, including Privet, Poplar and Elephant Hawks among the bigger ones, as well as a burly Drinker, But none were new for the year apart from this sadly drab one above which I'm pretty sure is a rather battered Brown Rustic. I took a pic of the Brown-line Bright-eye below because its eye does indeed brighten things up.

The Plume family of micro moths is being good to me this year. Last week I hosted my first-ever Crescent Plume and now I've just been playing hide-and-seek in the veg patch with this very attractive Yarrow Plume, officially known as Gillmeria pallidactyla.  With the Common Plume and the lovely White Plume which I often disturb by day, that makes four.

Visiting trappers

We've been having a lovely weekend with our younger son and his fiancée who are dab hands at Instagram et al and much better at taking interesting photographs than I am. Above is a novel take on the moth trap, possibly being examined by aliens. Actually, I had a slightly different but almost as unexpected visitor to it this morning: a large roe deer which fortunately didn't trample the bulb or get caught up in the wire.

Our visitors asked me to transfer some of about ten Elephant Hawk moths on to suitably exotic backgrounds for a photoshoot and here are a couple I took.  Hollyhocks do very well round here and go on flowering for months. They have just started, so good times are in store however wet the weather continues to be.

The moth trap remains busy and it was nice to find a little Short-cloaked moth on an eggbox, one of the UK's smallest macro moths and reminiscent of old engravings of women hurrying about on errands wearing cloaks and shawls. I also had my first Mother of Pearl of 2021, an iridescent species which will be here in huge numbers for the next couple of months.

Next we have a rather battered Light Arches, a distinctive moth and lovely when fresh, and a cheery Barred Yellow, adding a different element of the colour spectrum.

Yesterday afternoon I went in search of the Peacock caterpillars which I found last week and illustrated here, but found only these sinister-looking skins, below, from their final change before they pupate. Thinking it might contain a cocoon, I also prised open a folded nettle leaf sealed with a silken web and gave an awful shock to the resident spider and her tiny babies. Sorry!

Something to be said for a Leyland Cypress hedge after all

New moths for my 'garden list', which is tidily arranged in alphabetical order here, are unusual but last night I welcomed two. The first is the slightly sinister looking Cypress Carpet, above, with its demonic-looking 'eyes' and what appear to be pincers on either wing. This is a tremendously successful recent colonist in the UK; the first national record was as recent in 1984.

That was in East Sussex and the moth has since spread rapidly across the South of England and into Wales. Perhaps the reason is that its main foodplant is the Leyland Cypress, that curse of well-tended suburbs throughout the country.

Its fellow newcomer was the Crescent Plume shown in my second photo with its strange markings on the furled wing ends looking like spanners. In spite of appearances, it has no more evil intent towards the little tortrix, a fellow micro-moth, than the Cypress Carpet has of stabbing anyone or anything.

I briefly thought that my third moth might be yet another debut but I have had the Tawny-barred Angle once here, in 2018, and once in Leeds in 2011 when the arrival was the darker variant f. nigrofulvata. The moth is rated 'common' but that has not been my experience. Perhaps they are shy. Rarther than cypress, their caterpillars feed on conifers of various kinds and build their chrysalises among fallen pine cones.

There were plenty of other nice moths in the eggboxes, about 200 of them in all, on the second of the two National Moth Nights held annually which were the subject of this interesting report on the BBC's website. It is encouraging that interest in moths has risen as sharply during the lockdowns as the piece suggests. Long may that trend continue, then more people will grow to appreciate the likes of the Shoulder-stripe Wainscot above and the Beautiful Hook-tip below.

Here's another typical eggbox scene, below: a Drinker tucking its head away for a nap next to a Willow Beauty (I think) while a Harvester spider delicates passes by.

And below, a Dun-bar, a Marbled Minor or Lesser Marbled Minor, a Marbled White-spot and a delicate, tiny Small Fan-footed Wave (I think).

Finally, an unhappy crash-landing in the light bulb's little tophole for a Common Footman. I extracted it carefully and hope that it survives.