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.  

Super-Blue - unparalleled and storming into its eighth year

I don't spend a lot of time speculating about un-knowable things, but I am pretty sure that there is a Moth God, or Gods, with a set-up run along the lines of the immortal Olympians in Ancient Greece. Their speciality was teasing mere mortals and turning their assumptions on their head. So it is with me, whenever I make some prediction or other on this blog.

It's all very benign because my assumptions generally involve the season coming to a close and the prospect of shutting up shop as the darker mornings make checking the catch in my light trap less practical. Thus in my last post, I included an aside about the wonderful Clifden Nonpareil, my favourite moth of all,  failing to visit me this year after an almost annual appearance since its stunning return from effective extinction brought me my first in 2019.

So to this morning, and roughly halfway through examining the trap, I turned over an eggbox and - bingo! There was the unmistakably vast triangular form of a Nonpareil, which then co-operated helpfully when I tickled for further pictures to reveal its glorious blue-banded underwings and pastel duck-egg blue underside.

  

You can read a précis of the Nonpareil story here on my ecstatic blogpost back in September 2019 when my first arrived, following a gradual procession of reports of others further South. My latest brings my total in eight years to 18 - and this a moth which for 69 years of my life, I never had any hope of seeing. 

The actual dates of my Clifdens are 17 Sept 2019, 3 Sept 2020 (2), 4 Sept 2020, 5 Sept 2020, 10 Sept 2020, 15 Sept 2020 (2), 18 Sept 2020, 21 Sept 2020, 2 Oct 2020, 21 Sept 2021(3) and 5 Sept 2022. None in 2023 when I was on holiday for some of the Nonpareil season and did little trapping for other reasons including a broken mercury vapour bulb. Then one came on 29 Aug 2024, two last year on 7 Aug and 28 September, and now this one on 12 Oct - much the latest in the series and expanding the Nonpareil 'window' to nearly a week over two months.

Here is another photo emphasising the size of the moth by showing it alongside a dozing Sallow, a pretty standard medium-size UK species. In surface area, the Nonpareil comes close to the two great hawkmoths, the Convolvulus and the Death's Head. Here below, you can see its underside and a rear view:

If I had never caught any other moth in my trap, my cup would overflow with this.

Starting a Family the Merveille Way

 

I've been chirping away happily about the Merveille du Jour recently, the beautiful regular visitor to my moth trap at the tail-end of the season. Now here is a double treat: two Merveilles doing what comes naturally to moths and all other forms of life, including us.

I'm sorry to invade their privacy but it was a welcome sight as I had earlier decided to carry out a second distribution of the species to less favoured parts of our area, prompted by the arrival of four Merveilles in one night.

Here they are settling down comfortably in another of my moth ferries, which I slipped gently into one of my bike panniers for the half-hour ride to Summertown. They looked sleepy but two of them definitely were not. Behold what I found when Penny and I met our friend in a café for the handover:

A good sign, I hope, for a project partly triggered by a post from a fellow recorder on the Upper Thames Moths Facebook page (the same excellent source which put me on to the Pale-lemon Sallow in my last post) who has just moved from central Oxford to the rural suburb of Boar's Hill.  After a life without Merveilles du Jour, he has been visited by one straight away in the trap at his new home.  

Given that we have a positive glut of the lovely things in my garden, I thought that I would make a start on putting that right so that others in more central parts of the city would get a chance to see the moth too. I hope that this is acceptable to one and all; the introduction of 'new' species can be controversial and make some experts cross, as in the notorious case of an introduced colony of the continental mainland Map Butterfly in Gloucestershire in the early 20th century. A leading collector wiped it out, to equal anger from other entomologists who supported the project. 

Such small tempests benefit no one; and anyway my efforts involve just a few miles and little change in habitat, with plenty of the Merveille's favourite oak and ivy in the travellers' new home.  Meanwhile my visitors also gave me the chance of photoing the species'  underside, as one of them was particularly sleepy and obligingly rolled over when I gently tipped its eggbox. 

Now a change to a different colourway: yellow. The two moths below look as different as an omelette and scrambled egg but are actually the same. Each is a Sallow, the principal member of a small family whose brightness always cheers the Autumn here - and which has recently given me great excitement through the spread of the previously rare Pale-lemon Sallow exulted-over in my last post.

The extent of the Sallow's orangey-brown patterning is extremely varied for no known reason and the plain one in my first picture has been given the honour of its own sub-name: form flavescens meaning 'turning yellow' in Latin.

Another yellow favourite is still making occasional visits, the Swallow-tailed Moth below, which is followed by two shots of my most common visitor from the Sallows, the Barred, which also comes in several different forms.

Then we have a nice surprise: a Vapourer with its Hallowe'en 'eyes' and a name derived from the invisible trails of pheromone scent which the wingless female emits, much like her human counterparts graced by the products of Chanel and the like. I was ambushed long ago by one of the Vapourer's very fine, colourful and tussocky caterpillars while building our tree house.

And here's another yellow moth, but one which determinedly hides the vivid yellowy-orange bands on its underwings except when in flight: the Least Yellow Underwing.

Lastly, a boring-looking visitor in the Wax moth, whose dull appearance hides an interesting relationship with bees. Oh, and a joyful note from a national moth Facebook page that the Clifden Nonpareil's extraordinary comeback from virtual extinction has now reached Northumberland!  I haven't seen one this year, but it's fine by me if they've ll gone tearing off to the lovely North.

Lemony Pale

I'm not expecting anyone to jump up and down quite as vigorously as I am doing at the arrival of this moth.  It's not exactly an eye-catcher though as so often with moths, its subtle colouring rewards a careful and unhurried look. 

I admit absolutely that it's the sort of visitor to the moth trap which usually doesn't take up too much of my time because brown or grey UK species have a habit of looking too much alike. Indeed, my lazy option of the iPhone's Bug-ID got this one as wrong as I would have done, suggesting a Common Quaker (not in season here) or the current default for an unknown brown/grey moth, Vine's Rustic.

Luckily, a much newer recorder than my aged self put a photo - shown left - on our local moth-recording Facebook page earlier this week which she thought might be a Pale-lemon Sallow, and our generous experts soon confirmed that this was indeed so.  I was struck that such an unusual moth in these parts looked so, well, ordinary, and I wondered if I would recognise one in my own trap. Last night, I got the chance and passed the test. Yet another newcomer in my many long years of shining a light at night.  This truly is a wonderful year in that regard. 

The Pale-lemon Sallow has taken a very long time to  venture out of the Southern coastal rim and parts of East Anglia which have been its sparsely-populated UK base since the first record in the 1893, although it has a lifestyle which should favour the adventurous. The caterpillars feed on the catkins of black or Lombardy poplars and fall to the ground when the seeds do, continuing their meals as the catkins gently decompose. The larvae are so light that they are not hurt by their sudden descent without a parachute.

The trap had quite a number of other good moths in the eggboxes this morning and here's a selection: Turnip, Green-brindled Crescent, two nicely-different Beaded Chestnuts, Large Wainscot, Red-line Quaker and a spiky-looking Cypress Carpet, whose wing pattern is very similar to the much small Cypress Pug, shown in my final photo.  It must be something they ate.

Cloudy Custard and Hallowee'en Moths

 

I've mentioned the Clouded Yellow butterfly several times in the last month as it became clear that 2026 is indeed an 'invasion year' for the species, an irregular occurrence which sees thousands of the beautiful creatures cross the Channel in yellow 'clouds' and disperse far inland. I saw them first beside the Thames between Tadpole Bridge and Bablock Hythe and later in Kidlington's Stratfield Brake wild park, then back beside the Thames near Kelmscott, the venerable old home of William Morris. They are richly bright; custard with wings.

Now they have reached our garden and I am overjoyed. This is our first new butterfly species in 13 years, bringing our grand total to 26, the others being: Red Admiral, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Painted Lady, Marbled White, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Ringlet,Speckled Wood, Small Heath, Small Copper, Common Blue, Holly Blue, Brown Argus, Brimstone, Small White, Large White, Green-veined White, Orange-tip, Brown Hairstreak, Black Hairstreak, Small Skipper, Large Skipper and Essex Skipper. Not too bad, out of the UK's total of 60.

William Morris's shade is apparently also pleased; when we visited the lovely old church of St John the Baptist at Inglesham last week, also by the Thames near Lechlade, a Peacock butterfly circled in shafts of dusty sunlight above the carved wood and stone dating from the 13th century onwards and preserved from the Victorian 'restorers' by Morris who rowed the five miles up the Thames from Kelmscott to keep an eye on things.  We will be lucky if Clouded Yellows establish themselves here but warmer weather and their fondness for clover, lucerne and other herbage crops favoured by modern farming may help.  In the US, the species is actually known as the Alfalfa butterfly. 

In a different part of my entomological life, I have been puzzling over the ID of this alarming-looking beast, which I think is a Deep Brown Dart in spite of iRecord's screening robot telling me repeatedly that this would be out of season. I persist, because an awful lot of moths have been 'out of season' during the unusual weather we have had this year.  In one sense, indeed, this one is particularly in-season as we are approaching Hallowe'en and - eeek! - moths have been enlisted to help scary outings this year along, with the usual pumpkins, spiders and headless ghosts.

Here are some examples.  I'm going to take a positive view and buy a moth curtain to attract Trick-or-Treaters to our fascinating hobby, maybe showing them my hairy moth, pictured again below, as well as the sinister Box Tree Moth and the Black Rustic, the Darth Vader of the tribe. 

Finally, here's another spooky image for you.  Ghostly goings-on in our flowerbeds?  Ghouls on the lawn? No, its just the moth trap's mercury vapour bulb shining through our bathroom window's condensation after my shower.

Hot Tub

 

It's always the same. You talk about the moth-recording season winding down with October marching on, as I did in yesterday's post, and - Hey Presto! - something unusually lovely turns up.

So it happened this morning when I turned over an eggbox halfway through my check of the trap and said out aloud: "Goodness! What are you?"  Luckily nobody was passing within hearing range.

What I had found was the peachy-perfect moth shown above - and in many other pictures in this post. It's a Vestal but an aberration flushed as pink as one of its Roman namesakes would have been if they hopped out of a hot bath (and maybe then spotted a Peeping Tom in the temple cloisters).

I thought for a second that I might have attracted a wildly out of season Rosy Footman, a slightly more orangey-pink moth but with a similar glow, which I've seen once here and once at the grandchildren's in Wiltshire. But then I recalled an interesting discussion on the Upper Thames Moths Facebook page about various moths being suffused with pink after this long, hot Summer when they pupated in unusual warmth. The Autumnal Rustic was one example cited (and I have had very slight tinges of pink on some of mine) but the Vestal was the main one.

Sure enough, when I asked the UTM guru Dave Wilton, who has never failed me in 13 years of wise advice and amazing knowledge, he replied:

Vestals with a pink flush are certainly in vogue at the moment! Individuals like this do appear fairly regularly and I think we're seeing a lot more of them in 2026 simply because there's been such a huge influx of the moth, many thousands more of them than in a "normal" year, and they've probably bred here too.

I had kept the little creature safely in a box in case of wider interest but now I let it go, after a final photo session with an appropriate pal:

  

I also got a picture of its interestingly pallid and unadorned underside after it fluttered away from the photo session with Pippa on the lawn. As always at these moments, I am so grateful for the pleasure which comes from recording moths and the way that such wonderful surprises ambush me even after so many years.

I should end my adulation of this visitor by not assuming knowledge and showing a couple of pictures of the standard Vestal, whose creamy-white background and maroon stripe resemble the robes of the Roman temple guardians. Here we are, with one of them showing the pink variant alongside. Last picture of it, I swear:

It was an excellent night altogether, perhaps because I moved the trap unusually to a gloomy corner by our treehouse which is overshadowed by a big walnut, a tree notorious for creating a hostile environment for other plants growing beneath its wide and big-leaved branches. I briefly wondered if the moth below might be a Clifden Nonpareil, a regular here for eight or more years but not this one so far. But it wasn't big enough and proved to be a fine Red Underwing which took off and powered away, apparently intimidating my greedy pair of Robins with its size.

In the photos above, you can also enjoy my dressing gown, pyjamas, fingers and thigh. Meanwhile here are some other excellent arrivals: a Blair's Shoulder-knot (one of Dr Kenneth Blair's three namesakes as mentioned in the recent post on Clancy's Rustic),  a Lesser Treble-bar (note little hint of a pinky stripe), another of the many Merveille du Jours which are currently around to my great joy, a large Wainscot and a Beautiful Oak-tip with a second picture of it on the trap's rain cowl, showing how titchy it is.

Finally and just for the record, here's the micro Rush Veneer, followed by three hazards of last night's catch.  Luckily, I wasn't too intoxicated by my pink Vestal to forget to be wary.

A hornet, a wasp and a Buff-tailed Bumblebee. I often get them singly but seldom three in one go.