Tiger Time

 For those of us who measure the year's passing in moths rather than months, this is the happy season of the Scarlet Tiger. One of the showiest of all the UK's species, it also has the agreeable habit of flying by day. There are lots around; check out bright scraps of red whirling around your flower beds in eccentric fashion. Or keep an eye out, sadly, for the number which end up as roadkill or otherwise squashed.

Although they like flowers, Scarlet Tigers also enjoy perching on warm surfaces; the latest one to call here is a good example. At first I thought that this little blemish on my T-shirt on the washing line might be a stubborn food staiun.  But no, it was the Scarlet Tiger seen close-up in the split photo at the top of this post.

That close-up shows the wonderful greeny-black sheen like a petrol slick, created by the still more wonderful positioning of reflecting and refracting scales on the moth's wings.  My daughter-in-law, mother of the famed granddaughter entomologist who runs her own light trap, meanwhile got this very good picture below through a window, showing the scarlet underwings which give the moth its name but which are normally hidden when at rest.

The light trap is meanwhile attracting plenty of very attractive visitors and here are some of them below. First of all a Light Arches on the left below, and the familiar and currently very common Dark Arches on the right.

Next we have a composite of very pretty moths: from top left: Barred Yellow, Bordered Straw, Bordered Beauty and Buff Arches. They were accompanied by the pair of Beautiful Hook-tips shown in the next picture; all moths worthy of their appealing names.

Finally, for now, another composite of delicate visitors: Smoky Wainscot, White Plume, The Flame (with a tiny scrap of blue on its 'badge' which I'd never noticed before,  and a Bird-cherry Ermine, one of the two micro moths which create those enormous and ghostly caterpillar webs on fruit trees.

All these moths have been flying under the recent 'Strawberry Moon' huge and very low in the sky - but never in my experience strawberry-coloured, though many of the pictures online have an obvious trace of that.  The name comes from the coincidence of the atmospheric conditions which give this enlarged effect with the start of the wild strawberry season, which has indeed just happened around here. Our moon was definitely orange.

Shiny Rosemary

The moth trap is stowed away temporarily because of rain and cold nights but that hasn't stopped our local insects from coming up with good things. Our rather scrawny old Rosemary bush, for example, is studied with the jewel-like beetles shown above. Guess their name? Yes, the Rosemary Beetle.

I've recorded them twice before on the blog, both times in September, in 2020 and 2021. The first occasion was a photo taken by one of my sons in London (it was Covid time) and he very excellently suggested renaming it the Suffragette Beetle because of its colours of purple and green, with the sheen providing the lightness of the campaigners' third colour, white.

A white insect was coincidentally next to catch my eye when I moved from weeding round the Rosemary to doing thame in the patch of mint alongside. Here is a White Plume, a beautifully delicate micro moth which you may have disturbed yourself during daytime from long grass.

Finally, I dragged a garden chair to one side to make way for the grasscutter and a flash of panic-stricken orange revealed the presence of a Large Yellow Underwing. These are very reluctant to show the bright underwings which account for their name, so I turned the camera on to video mode and gave the reluctant moth a tickle.

Oh for an Oleander! But this will do very nicely for now

I have been very lucky in seeing moth and butterfly rarities which I never thought would come my way, notably the Death's Head Hawk moth and the Clifden Nonpareil. But I cannot honestly rate my chancdes of ever setting eyes on an Oleander Hawk moth.  When my entomological granddaughter asks me which moth I would most like to meet, the Oleander is invariably my reply.

So guess what? The said granddaughter has just given me one for my birthday and extremely excellent it is. It's the picture above which exactly meets the criteria which Penny and I were setting the other day in a discussion about art. Few people want a painting to resemble a photography exactly, for what is the point? But if you can produce the 'idea' of your subject in your own style, layering the paint as she has done and making skilful use of textured paper, then you have it.  Spot-on!

We do actually grow Oleander here just in case one of these glorious but exceedingly rare migrants from continental Europe is flying nearby. But I have inspected vast groves of the pink and white-flowered bush in Greece, France and Spain with nary a sign. What hope has our single potted plant?

The moth trap has meanwhile been happy to welcome a Beautiful Golden Y above and a Lackey, below, the latter names because the coloured stripes of its caterpillar were held by 18th century entomologists to resemble footmen's uniforms.  

Also new for the year, we have a Mottled Beauty, above, and, below, an ichneumon wasp which my iPhone identifies generically as Ophion and a caddis fly which it reckons more specifically to be Limnephilus rhombicus.

And finally, our little local colony of Lizard Orchids has come out earlier than the commoner species which abound here and I can't resist showing you its weird flowers. The others should catch up soon after today's very welcome, persistent rain

Unexpected Hum

 

Well, this was a surprise. Penny and I were just enjoying a glass of wine yesterday evening in our conservatory when a loud mixture of buzz, whine and hum alerted me to what I thought was a hornet or very large bumble bee. It was neither. The hum was the clue. A beautiful Hummingbird Hawk moth spent five minutes sipping nectar from our climbing geraniums before heading off to sleep - judging by its disappearance for the rest of the evening - in our thickly-leaved and tumbling grape vine.

I've been expecting more hawk moths to add to my current total of four for this year - Poplar, Lime, Privet and Large Elephant - but I was betting on either an Eyed or Pine to come next. It just shows how you never know. Wouldn't absolute predictability be dull?

Meanwhile here is a beautiful portfolio of Light Emeralds, above, showing the wayward nature of iPhone digital cameras with colour as they hunt for light; the two on the left are closer to the natural, eye's view in my experience. Those on the right are more like the species when it's been around for a week or two and the fresh green has started to fade.

Now for some butterflies, to celebrate the lovely weather. First, a Small Tortoiseshell which accompanied me along a local path across a grassy meadow. 

 

Then a male Orange-tip on a lovely two-day walk we did last week up the River Wey to help raise funding for cousin in long-term care after a cycling accident.  And finally a skittish Comma which also seemed to enjoy my company out walking.

One of the glories of walking at the moment is the profuse flowering of Tudor briar roses which hang in great swags of white, pink and occasionally red blooms. I randomly took the photo below and was pleasantly surprised when I had a look and only then spotted the little green jewel of a beetle. Poor thing, it has a very unflattering range of names: the sadly accurate Swollen-thighed Beetle, similarly the Fat-legged Flower Beetle and finally the False Oil Beetle. Why not the Beautiful Emerald Beetle? Perhaps another species got there first.

New-for-the-year moths are arriving every day and I'm faithfully registering them on iRecord, but my latest list had a non-moth exception: this beautiful but intensely annoying Roe Deer which still manages to get into our garden in spite of all manner of barriers. Luckily our veg is well-protected now but we don't underestimate the deer's determination and cunning.

Now for some of those new arrivals, below: Riband Wave, Nematopogon swammerdamella (a 'longhorn' micro whose name is as impressive as its antannae), Smoky Wainscot and a micro whose ID both I and my iPhone have yet to nail down.

Next the familiar micro Cochylis atricapitana, a Blood-vein, another micro regular Agapeta hamana, 

a very distinctively marked Tawny Marbled Minor, a European Corn-borer micro and a delicate Common White Wave.

Finally, here comes a Small Clouded Brindle on my rather imperial purple eggbox,  a pretty but ridiculously-named Single-dotted Wave and something unknown for now, possibly a fading Yellow-barred Brindle or Seraphim.

Oh and just to leave you on a quirky note, here's a Pale Tussock looking like a Star Wars bit-player.  More soon.

Two more Hawks

My biggest regular moth beast, the Privet Hawk, flew in two nights ago, kindly coinciding with US guests, a happy hobby of my moths which seem to sense when we have visitors, high days or holidays. It obligingly perched on their fingers and we also had a Large Elephant Hawk to add its pinky-greeny beauty to the scene.

The supporting cast has been excellent as well and I've been kept busy uploading details of newcomers to iRecord. Among them in order below...

A Green Pug

A distinctively patterned Buff Ermine

And another - the standard type has a scattering of spots overall, whereas these have the strong black cluster in the first case and very little on the forewing in the second

Meanwhile here is the year's first Buff-tip, a marvellously well-camouflaged moth which uncannily resembles a twig.  Alongside it in the eggboxes were a Spectacle, a Marbled Minor, a Turnip moth and a pretty little Grass Rivulet - delightful name.

The Gold Spot is a very welcome visitor as a change from the much commoner Burnished Brass shown in the second picture below. Actually, the position of the camera and the light on the reflective wing scales give this particular example of the BB extra distinction.

On we go with two non-moth guests whose IDs I can now establish speedily thanks to the AI ID button on my iPhone. Behold the natty little bug Glyphotaelius pellucidis and the caddis fly Rhabdomiris striatellus.

Not many more to go now. Here is a neighbourly pair of Large Nutmegs (though my otherwise trusty iPhone insists wrongly that they are Dark Arches). Then comes a Freyer's Pug, a Tawny Marbled Minor, a Bright-line Brown-eye, an Orange Footman and, er, I'm not sure what. The iPhone is still fixated with Dark Arches but I hope to get back here with the right ID soon. 

And so to a very pretty if soberly-coloured Knot Grass and a Common White Wave, gracefully swaying on a rosebush stalk just outside the trap.