Curled up Cattie

 

The march of moths through global culture continues apace: while I persist in my efforts to track down the caterpillar which stars in the opening sequence of the latest Sense and Sensibility film. The Economist's obituary the other week (a rather over-stylised column but let that pass) kicked of with a moth and an interesting story about it.  

On cue I found a brightly-coloured cattie myself just now, although it showed no inclination to explore my fingers. I have to admit that they are a bit less appealing than those of the young woman playing Marianne in the film. but maybe caterpillars don't see it that way, and its inertia was just due to the cold.

My iPhone Bug ID suggests that it will turn into a Large Yellow Underwing and iRecord has just concurred when I uploaded a couple of photos and the identity there. By happy chance, the egg boxes also contained this chap below, an adult Large Yellow Underwing, whose identity only became apparent in the third and last photo, although you can see the yellow and black pattern dimly from below in the second image.

From yellow to green, and here is a Merveille du Jour, still brightening up the trap as we move towards Hallowe'en and November.

Then a Winter/November/Autumnal moth first pretending to be a butterfly and then in its usual resting pose, followed by a Cypress Pug, a Light Brown Apple Moth micro and a Turnip moth.

And to finish up with a Harvestman with his family, now all expelled outdoors with the help of Penny's wonderful and supposedly humane suction-operated spider-catcher. I hope that a change of temperature will be merely bracing for them.

Sense, Sensibility - and a Caterpillar

 My current project, given the worsening weather and darker mornings which limit the moth trap's appeal, is trying to identify the humble caterpillar which gloriously opens the new film version of Sense and Sensibility. It is a high honour for a humble creature and one made all the better by the amount of comment which it has prompted, such as this intro from a piece in the Economist.

The little scene illustrates the wild, impulsive and curious nature of Marianne Dashwood's 'sensibility' as opposed to her sister Elinor's sound 'sense'. In days gone by, the girl would more likely have been shown delighting in a rabbit's bobtail or a soaring hawk. Hooray that caterpillars are having their day in the sunshine! The task now is to find out, in the current absence of an online clip which actually shows the little chap, what he or she is. 

And it's only a few months since a Box-tree Moth, dreaded destroyer of neat hedges, made an anachronistic appearance in another Jane Austen film, as noted by eagle-eyed fellow-moth enthusiast Dave Morris here.  Meanwhile, I have a humbler domestic ID task with these two caterpillars below, which I rescued from a puddle in our rain-soaked garden.

I've sent a guess to iRecord which has a useful system of suggesting something more likely. In due course, I may get an expert ID but if not, it will not be the end of the world. Telling this sort of caterpillar apart is a terrible way of passing the time.  Ditto with the very worn moth below, and with worn adults generally. Their markings can fade and their wings get torn with a thoroughness which can ultimately make certainty impossible. 

I am 99 percent sure that this is a Sallow and my unfailing expert Dave Wilton on Upper Thames Moths concurs; but I feature it just because of the marvellous range of suggestions from the Bug ID on my iPhone. I do not really like to poke fun at this facility because it has often been a tremendous help. But perhaps it is good to highlight the limitations of AI at a time when the typically OTT world of journalism and social media is convinced that the robots are going to wipe us out. 

So here's the list.  All wrong, some wildly so: Dun-bar, Orange Swift, Acanalonia bivittata, the two-striped planthopper, Corn earworm (US-speak), Canary-shouldered Thorn, Forest semilooper (endemic to NZ), White-speck and Twin-spotted Quaker. Fiddlesticks!

Turning to other arrivals: Behold a Silver Y, a Chestnut, a Turnip, a Feathered Thorn, a couple of Autumnal/November/Winter moths and a Centre-barred Sallow, the last bringing a scrap of cheerful colour as the year winds down. 

Pieces of Eight

                               

We have a curious structure in our garden which may one day be famous. Called Fort Hansard, it stands on what is probably the highest-point in our low-lying hamlet and the reason for that is also the origin of its name. My father Richard was a Liberal MP in an era when members were given bound copies of Hansard, the Parliamentary record, and we inherited a veritable shed-load of these handsome books which no-one in the world seemed to want. 

We tried pubs, schools and secondhand bookshops, gave some to family and friends and kept others which included some of the speeches he made, but in the end, we decided to bury the remainder and crown the resulting hillock with a wooden, US Cavalry-style fort. There are an awful lot of subterranean books under the ethereal-looking structure below and our secret hope is that one day archaeologists will stumble upon them and debate why the UK Parliament appears to have met on the outer edge of Oxford between 1966 and 1987.

The reason for telling you this, is that for the first time in our 13 years here, I put the moth trap inside Fort Hansard and its eerie glow, as shown below, brought me yet another wholly new moth, the Figure of Eight above. 

I recognised something wholly unfamiliar when I first clocked it, clinging to the side of an eggbox as shown below. My iPhone's Bug ID came up with the manifestly wrong suggestion of an Oak Beauty, which looks very different and does not fly at this time of the year. But some good, old-fashioned work with the Moth Bible came up trumps and I have, most unexpectedly, notched up my eighth entirely new macro-moth this year.

Here are some further photos which perhaps show the reason for its name more clearly. Meanwhile my pleasure is increased by the interest shown on Upper Thames Moths, albeit for unexpected reasons. The group's tireless expert Dave Wilton commented on the Facebook page:  "Surprising when you consider how much blackthorn you've got close by." This is true, and accounts for the marvellous presence of Black Hairstreak butterflies here. Dave goes on to say that although the Figure of Eight is supposedly a species in serious decline, the Upper Thames is one of its hotspots. He says: "I've trapped three local woods over the past week and it was by far the most numerous moth, with more than 100 coming to light in each location." 

More than 100! And I've had just one...  Well here's some more of it, though I restrained myself from taking a hundred pictures:

A couple of other Upper Thames trappers joined the discussion, each with a solitary arrival like me. Anyway, it's most welcome and joins my much more frequent guest the Figure of 80, below showing (slightly faintly) the reason for its name, a moth which is unrelated except through nomenclature.

The trap has meanwhile remained busy in spite of markedly colder nights. Here are some current regulars, left to right in each line: Cypress Carpet, Satellite, Green-brindled Crescent, Lesser Yellow Underwing, Lunar Underwing, White-spot, Autumnal Rustic, Large Wainscot and Feathered Thorn.

And then: Pale Mottled Willow, Black Rustic, Winter/Autumnal, Red-green Carpet, Rosy Rustic, Autumnal/November, Large Yellow Underwing, Merveille du Jour and Sallow. 

Marvellous Movements

Another four Merveille du Jours have started a new life in North Oxford after a friend expressed an interest. I had sent him a photo of my Clifden Nonpareil and his brother-in-law countered with a Merveille from his own moth trap down in Kent. The transfer went well, with my eggbox moth-ferry heavily cushioned by my mac in the bike's panniers.

I'm interested that the top moth in the picture above of two of my quartet has a slightly tawny tone to the delicious green. I haven't noticed any variation in the species previously and the Moth Bible suggests that when variation does occur, it's usually a more dramatic matter of black blotches. Perhaps the hint of brown is like the pink from hotter weather during pupation, as discussed with the Vestal in previous posts.

It's a very different matter with another moth which is around in large numbers at the moment, the beautiful Green-brindled Crescent with its metallic scales. I hadn't had its brown variation,  form cappucino, until last night, although it's very well-known and has been common enough here in recent years. Here it is above left, next to the standard moth.

While we're on the subject of colour variations, this very grey White-point (as opposed to the usual brown) came last night, while new for my year was the Yellow-line Quaker below (not rare; I probably just hadn't noticed any predecessors). It is followed by a couple of handsome, fresh Rustics, Autumnal and Square-spot, a Shuttle-shape Dart and a Brick, a name which always reminds me of my mother's generation, to whom 'bricks' were helpful good sorts.

To conclude: here are some further examples of the cultural spread of moths at our local Sainsbury's: a very pricy ready-made cocktail has joined the Halloween decorations which I featured here last week and am planning to distribute to our wider family's horde of children, not to so much terrify as to further enthusiasm for moths.

Antenna envy. And anti-freeze

I have never wanted to be a moth although I may perhaps come back as one. If so, I very much hope that I will be a species with antennae as large and beautiful as those on this Feathered Thorn. They are the one really enviable attribute of a moth for humans, just as we almost all wish that we could fly like a bird. (Not like a moth, whose aviation is mostly jittery and violent with none of the swooping grace and majesty of large butterflies or the delicate grace of smaller ones).

The arrival of this distinctively triangular and foxy species betokens the approach of Winter although our current weather continues to be almost Summery. The colour is meanwhile Autumnal, excellent camouflage as the trees begin to turn in their annual glory of red, green, yellow and brown.

Here below is the moth from below, perching on the inside of my light trap's transparent cowl. Both the colour and the eponymous feathered antennae mean that this is a male. The females are bigger but duller and with simple antennae like threads.

My talk of the seasons is a good introduction of two species which require dissection of the genitalia (yuk!) to tell them apart. Im glad that my iPhone nonetheless goes ahead boldly and tells me that the first is a Winter and the second a November Moth.

There are three other species in this Very Hard To Tell Apart group, the Pale November, the Autumnal and the Pale Autumnal.  An interesting feature which they share is that their equivalent of blood contains elements similar to those found in ant-freeze which enable them to fly in cold temperature, sometimes after the prolonged period of heavy choking and warming-up which was a feature of cars in my youth.