Catching Up

 

I have always enjoyed the oddities of housing dozy moths in eggboxes, which rather resemble Eton Fives courts in their collection of peculiar angles.  (Fives is another of my past-times, in spite of my increasing age).  I have seen all sorts of peculiar configurations of box and moth and the nose-dived Large Yellow Underwing, viewed from each main point of the compass in my pictures, is a worthy addition to the list.

Another of my catch-up photos following a run of rather ordinary nights (hornet peril apart) shows two Plume moths with their curious T-shape caused by tightly-furled wings). They looked different to my eyes, chiefly because The one on the left was beige-ish and the other pale grey. But they may both be the familioar Common Plume. I will see if Upper Thames Moths on Facebook can help. 

Here's a spider for a change, spotted by Penny while we were sipping capuccinos in the garden of Gail's coffee bar in Summertwon. Did you know that the Liberals apparently targeted every constituency with a Gail's in their very successful camnpaign in the last General Election.  Our constituency, Bicester and Woodstock, went Liberal from Tory to our great delight. But it doesn't have a Gail's.  Ah, ha, said friends; that's because you all go to the one in Summertown. And this is true. 

Butterflies next. Summer may be drawing to an end but there are plenty about including the glorious Red Admirals like this one, and Peacocks. 

I am keeping a vague eye out for the UK's newest butterfly species, the Southern Small White, but it is so tediously similar to the very ordinary (and annoying to vegetable-growers like myself) Small White, that I'm not trying too hard.  I think that these two victims of our greenhouse's heat on a sunny day are both Small Whites.  The Red Admiral was also in the greenhouse but had the nouse to sense a breeze from the ventilator roof windows and escape.

Lastly on the greenhouse theme, here's a Meadow Brown which had the equally good sense to stay outside. Only its reflection appears to be indoors.  Following below it, a Small Heath on a country walk near Minster Lovell's marvellously atmospheric ruins.

More moths: here's a delicate and very pale-ly marked Single-dotted Wave followed by a Small Mother of Pearl which Penny found dead in our bedroom, coincidentally just as I was reading my account in this blog of realising that this micro species is different from the standard and very common Mother of Pearl and belatedly adding it to my new arrivals list.

A quartet next - top left to bottom right: Dusky Thorn, Angle Shades (soon afterwards sadly grabbed by a Robin when my attention was briefly diverted by a hornet), a micro needing ID and another very pale Single-dotted Wave.

Above we have a Knot Grass cateroillar discovered by my daughter-in-law on one of her hollyhocks and below another quartet: Latticed Heath, a pair of Angle Shades, a Tawny Speckled Pug and a Treble-bar unusally showing its slightly yellow hindwings.

Then four more (like T S Eliot, we have Four Quartets in this post): A Bordered Beauty,  Square-spot,  Common Plume (I think) and Hebrew Character.

And to finish with: another Hebrew Character, a Flounced Rustic,  a Willow Beauty and another mystery, though it shouldn't be at my age. Upper Thames Moths, here I come.

Big Stingers

 

Inspecting the moth trap has recently become slightly perilous as we have a nest of hornets in the house eaves and they have taken to coming to the light. I like them in spite of their fearsome appearance and they are famously mild-mannered. However, I have discovered a new use for our kitchen tongs.

Here's the record tally for a single night, above, and below you can spy a hornet keeping a beady eye on my old enemy the Robin; and vice versa. Neither made a move although the Robin sadly managed to swoop in on an Angle Shades before I could shoo him away.

We managed to expel a couple of hornets from our bedroom after leaving the light on and the window open for a little too long at night, absorbed in our bedtime books. But the most interesting drama came when we watched, somewhat awe- or horror-struck, an epic battle between another of the stingers and a remarkably cool-headed and methodical spider.

My vid of the battle is too long to post but here are some rather blurry stills. The strength and gluey-ness of spiders' web is just astonishing, as is the spider's sure hold on the web as it swayed and hurtled too and fro. The hornet made Herculean attempts to escape but, as you can see below, to no avail.

Nature is not for the faint-hearted!

Spotted and Dotted

I was saying only on Tuesday that completely new moths here are a rare occurrence, after 20 years of light-trapping. Now I have had my second in three nights. It's one which I have coveted for a while; the Four-spotted Footman which has long been a rarity but now - like many other such moths - seems to be finding our warmer climate agreeable.

Previously, I would have been much more likely to find one in France, as one of my great-nieces did in Brittany ten days ago. It was dead - her Mum's pic is below - and in a corner of their room with equally dead flies, so she naturally came to the conclusion that they were its favourite food. But like the overwhelming majority of moths, the adult Four-spotted Footman sips only at nectar; its caterpillars do the eating, interestingly of lichen.

 

Why 'Four-spotted' when it seems to be spot-free, though very smart in the manner of all Footman moths, a neat appearance which gave them their name in the 18th century? The answer is in Richard Levington's exquisite paintings from the Moth Bible; it is only the female who has the spots, two on each forewing, one of which is hidden in the wing-furling when the moth is at rest.  The moth is much bigger than the other UK Footmans, or should that be -men? Altogether, a very satisfying catch.

There is also a Four-DOTTED Footman which has the same gender difference in its wing patterns and is slightly commoner although I have never seen one. Here's hoping.

Here below are a couple more pics of my Four-spotted; as with almost all moth species, the male is likelier to come to light thane the female, being out and about more in search of a mate, but again I live in hope.

Elsewhere in the eggbox, snoozing visitors included a Common Plume, Emmelina monodactyla, which is almost as faithful as the Poplar Hawk in its Summer-long visits, a Small Bloodvein and a Six-striped Rustic. 

Time for a Name Campaign

 

There are so many campaigns these days, given the lamentable state of the world, that you may not have the energy to join a new one. But it is surely time that the Old Lady moth was renamed. It's a long time, even in Greece, since elderly women dressed in clothes like this poor old moth's.

It's as out-of-date as the road sign for the elderly which has often been re-imagined to show what a spirited lot we over-70s now are:

And our grandchildren made the point by giving Penny two good children's books as a present, one about a traditional Granny from times past like the Old Lady moth's name, and the other a thoroughly contemporary funster:

Let's see.  There's recently been a very successful move to give micro-moths English/vernacular names as well as their cumbersome Graeco-Latin ones which help international scientific co-operation but can intimidate the amateur. That's well-explained by its prime mover below. Maybe reform in the world of insect nomenclature is on the march.

 

Meanwhile, here are some of my other visitors - a Rosy Rustic, a Small Dusty Wave (very good name indeed!),  a Yellow Shell and the tiny little Least Carpet.

A new fan of Leyland Cypress

 

A new moth for me has come calling: the Cypress Pug which shares both the appearance and the taste in caterpillar foodplant of the Cypress Carpet. Both are relatively new for the UK as a whole, perhaps having found out about our otherwise unfortunate national liking for Leyland Cypress hedges.

The Cypress Carpet, shown below, first visited me on 17 July 2021. It made its debut in the UK in 1984 when the first was recorded in East Sussex. Thanks to the hedges, no doubt, it has since flourished mightily and is now a regular here and across most of the South of England.

Back on the Pug, this made landfall at Lamorna Cove in Cornwall in 1059 and has since spread in much the same way as the Carpet although it has taken longer to find me.  There is no scientific connection that I know of but both little moths strike me as diminutive versions of the Pine Hawk - incidentally the only one of my regular hawk moths not to show up this year, so far.  Here's one, to see if you agree:

Here are a couple more Cypress Pug shots, one with the wings outstretched, the customary resting position for pugs, and the other its underside, courtesy of the trap's transparent cowl.

What else have I to report? Here's a nice Frosted Orange, like my last post's Centre-barred Sallow a harbinger of Autumn, followed by a Large Fruit-tree Tortrix, a large 'micro' indeed, and a couple of current regulars, the Flounced Rustic and the Straw Underwing.

Sulphur and Brimstone

 

There's a yellowy-orangey theme to this post, triggered by finding the lovely fresh Brimstone moth above in a pose which shows how the sulphurous colour extends to its whole body. It looks as though it has just flown through a tin of Dayglo powder paint. 

The orange component meanwhile comes from this Centre-barred Sallow, the first arrival of a brightly-coloured family which I associate with late Summer and early Autumn. Like everything in the natural world, they are out early this year because of the heat.

Here's another orange star, a Dusky Thorn, and below, three pictures closing in on a Copper Underwing to give a rare glimpse of the reason for its name:

The delicate little Green Carpet in the first Copper Underwing photo was one of at least a dozen of this pretty species - a prettiness which quickly fades. Here are two of them making that point, below: a very fresh one at the top and a fading example at the bottom, probably several weeks old.

The same fate will overtake this exquisite Light Emerald, so beautifully green in its freshness. If it survives the birds and bats for a fortnight, it will be a pallid version of its glorious, initial self.