Thank Goodness, the Merveille has made it

The night sky is busy with lights at this time of year - Guy Fawkes above and Hallowe'en below. Can the moth trap hold its own against such exciting alternative attractions. Fortunately the answer is Yes, it can. 

And fortunately too, there are still lovely things out there for it to tempt, above all the fabulous Merveille du Jour which has always visited me here in the late Autumn. I love the name as much as the subtly-coloured moth itself, although strictly speaking it is a Merveille de la Nuit. The composite below is interesting because the closest by far of the four images to what the human eye sees is the one at the bottom right. iPhone cameras are marvellous but their relentless search for light can play pop with colours and tones. 

Elsewhere among the eggboxes, I have been visited by this distinctive micro below,  Acleris variegana or the Garden Rose Tortrix. I've posted two pictures so that you can tell from the eggbox what a mite it is.

Then we have another of the many Emmelina monodactyla micros which my garden clear-ups are disturbing by day; and after that a fourth micro whose focus is, I think, too blurred for a definite ID.  

Finally, a typical souvenir of another visit to the grandchildren, a ladybird late to hibernate and meanwhile dallying next to a grandson's brightly-varnished nail. You may be able to see from the photo that his thumbnail is blue. They are as bright as any Brazilian butterfly. 

Busy end to the month

 

Much the most exciting moth I've seen since my last post is this Silver-striped Hawk, needless to say not here but on the door of some friends in Spain. They sent the picture with a request for ID which I was only too happy to provide. One day, maybe, a friend or relative of this lovely creature will turn up here. 

The Mottled Umber, above, is a perfectly decent substitute for the time being and also a 'garden first' for me this year as I did little trapping in January and February when the moth may also be around on warmer evenings. I was also very pleased to get this strikingly well-marked Autumnal, Winter or November Moth - three species which are so closely alike that I can never hope to be certain which is which.

There are lots of them about at the moment, both in and around the trap and fluttering like little Hallowe'en ghosts in the car's headlamps. Here are another half-dozen, less distinctively-marked apart from the darkish one on the left of the bottom row. 

I've been busy repairing the trap in between times; the transparent cowl is gradually increasing its ratio of Sellotape to plastic but should keep going another year or so.

The eggboxes have been only lightly populated as I'd expect this late in the year but the variety is holding up well and there are some interesting contrasts like this beautifully fresh Red-green Carpet on the left below which arrived the same evening as a much more careworn cousin, on the right. 

Goodness knows what the almost entirely descaled moth below might be. You seldom see them quite that denuded of the tiny little tiles on their wingswhich give moths their colours and patterns. It seemed quite happy on one of our home-grown parsnips and was perfectly able to fly.

Other visitors below have been Lunar Underwing, Sprawler, Yellow-line Quaker, Large Yellow Underwing, the delicate micro Emmelina monodactyla, another Large Yellow Underwing, the first December Moth of the year in its nice warm gaberdene, a Black Rustic and a handsome Feathered Thorn (sadly pounced on by one of our robins when it flew off).

Another excellent arrival was this Green-brindled Crescent, the standard form with the green metallic scales - enlarged on the right - as opposed to the milky brown ones of the variety cappuccino which came the other day.  It was also good to have the Silver Y below, a nice fresh specimen which I suspect only recently hatched from its chrysalis. It's one of the few UK moths which can be seen in every month of the year.

Here are three of the moths already described along with a nice bright Barred Sallow, bottom right. As you know if you've been reading regularly, I'm having fun with my updated iPhone and here's another of its features: the ability to copy parts of a photo, which appear excitingly circled by a ring of light, and then paste them in as standalone moths, as below. It's a very useful ploy for livening up emails to the grandchildren. 

Nearly there. Sorry for the very blurred focus, but I had fun stalking this Light Brown Apple micromoth, Epiphyas postvittana, along the canal bank in broad daylight, while below it is another interesting moth in the eggboxes, a Snout, common earlier in the year but seldom seen by me this late.

Finally, here's an Oak Bush-cricket, I think, and to end with, a water vole scampering across the towpath to safety below the reeds.

The brighter side of Leyland Cypress

In spite of the lateness of the year, my senior niece's husband's birthday (hope you follow that) brought a First of the Year in the shape of the top moth in the picture above, top in both senses of the word. It's a Cypress Carpet, a Continental species which was first recorded in the UK in 1984, in West Sussex, but has flourished in the South of the country and visits me every year.

As its name suggests, its caterpillars live on cypress trees and its spread may be one of the very few good things about the nation's predilection for fast-growing Leyland Cypress as a hedge. Below it are a Red-green Carpet on the right, a constant joy in late October, and another recent success story, the immigrant White-point which sometimes produces only a few UK records in a year but has been abundant in the last decade.

I put the trap out again in the early evening of the birthday and brought it in at 10pm when forecast rain began to star. Its evening visitors included thos below: a Large Yellow Underwing, an Autumnal moth, a lovely cappuccino variety of the Green-brindled Crescent (another star of late Autumn) and a Common Marbled Carpet.  Overall, a great celebratory haul.

The next night saw the much-hyped Hunter's Moon which for us at least was simply a very bright moon as shown with the moth trap in the first picture below. I can seldom resist taking pictures of the trap's eerie light and here it is again on a couple of other recent occasions.

Some scientists believe that the moon is central to moths' navigation and that light traps can disrupt this either as a rival moon or simply through upsetting the insects' navigation systems. In any event, another very handsome, fresh Red Green Carpet got through and later posed on high alert with its wings folded upwards like a resting butterfly's.

There was also this distinctively-coloured micro-moth Acleris sparsana and a few Daddy Longlegs and flies.

The media concern this Summer about butterfly numbers has had some evidence for it in our part of the world, probably because of the very wet weather, but there's undoubtedly a revival for our main Autumn species at the moment. As well as the many Red Admirals which I mentioned the other day, the Speckled Wood is often to be seen along woodland rides, hedges and the canal towpath.

Ditto with dragonflies which are all over the garden when the sun comes out. Here is a Common Darter comparing its dull red livery with the gaudier overcoat of a Ladybird.

Bring on the Robots

This isn't the most exciting time of year for the moth enthusiast to say the least, but there has been one extremely interesting development in my own small world. For reasons of age and technological incomprehension, I have been slow to update the system on my iPhone and therefore have only just started using its wonderful animal-identifying facility which brings up this handy little icon when you photograph a butterfly, moth or other bug.

I'd got used to using the 'phone's plant identifier which worked the same system with a little icon of a flower, but was amazed and jealous when my sons showed me the ladybird one and I couldn't access it on my 'phone. This led to the long overdue upgrade and now I can. And it is a real help with my perennial challenge of how to identify the 'brown and boring' types of UK moth.

Here's an example from this morning when a drizzly night produced a typically meagre catch with only Red-green Carpets standing out amid the tired old Large Yellow Underwings, a battered Lunar Underwing and some Daddy Long-legs. There was one other moth, below, which I suspected of being a Red-line Quaker but wasn't sure. The auto-bug identifyer on the 'phone confirmed my guess.

As with all Artificial Intelligence, the system is only as good as the data fed into it and there is always room for improvement, which I am sure is going on. I asked the experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog what they thought and you can enjoy their answers here  Clearly, caution is needed with a robot which can mistake a moth (admittedly a rare one) for a lizard! But as Dave Wilton, the blogmaster at UTM suggests, the important thing is to recognise the limitations.

I sent the composites of recent moths below to the UTM blog with the iPhone's suggestions which were: Willow Beauty, Willow Beauty (underwing), Lunar Underwing, Straw Underwing/Clouded Drab (though I was sure that this was a Deep-brown Dart, Double Square-spot, Archips podana, White-point, Square-spot Rustic and another Lunar Underwing.  Then in the second batch, Pale Mottled Willow, Lesser Yellow Underwing, Square-spot Rustic and a third Lunar Underwing.

The AI made two bad errors in the first composite; I was right about Deep-brown Dart and the Double Square-spot was an Autumnal Rustic, a very familiar moth which even I can ID. But the overall score was not bad and I would have had trouble on my own with Pale Mottled Willow and several of the others. 

I did a final check when news broke on UTM of a rare arrival called Porter's Rustic which I certainly wouldn't have known if it had landed here. The robot couldn't make sense of the first two pictures from the UTM blog below, but included Porter's in its three suggestions for the final - and much clearer - photo.  So in general, hurray!

Here are a couple of today's Red-green Carpets as an escape from brown and dulldom, one with its perky tail in the air which must be as much of a 'Come and Get Me!' as it looks:

Here's a shy Black Rustic, too, a species which hasn't been abundant this year, plus two looks at a sadly dead Lunar Underwing which show a little more bodily detail than is usually possible with a live one:

Good news meanwhile from the magazine Wizz! Pop! Bang! which describes itself as the Awesome Science Magazine for Kids and has instructions in the current issue on making your own moth trap. This is very commendable but I wouldn't suggest it myself in late October when the chances of disappointment are high. They ran it as part of a Hallowe'eny focus on the dark and night-time. Still, it's getting a little warmer, so here's hoping for any awesome science kid who has a go.

A more profitable exercise in entomology over the coming half-term might be searching the cabbage patch for Large and Small White caterpillars. I have no time for these myself, but anything bug-like and a little out of the usual is always exciting for a child to find.

Now here's a puzzle for you. Follow these pictures slowly through to find out which insect we are looking at and where it has perched. No cheating...

Look carefully...

Aha! Got the insect. But the background?

A bit sculptural?

Indeed! The bust of Churchill at Blenheim Palace was nice and warm in the sunshine and attracted one of the many Red Admirals we've enjoyed this year. In spite of media headlines, it's not been at all bad for butterflies and here is a recent Brimstone in such good condition that it must be a third or even fourth generation of the butterfly which first appeared in our garden in early April.

And finally... A couple of insecty references in other and unrelated parts of the world and a lovely Morning Glory and blackberries which welcomed us home from Italy.