Austen's anachronistic moth

 Hats off to a fellow poster on Upper Thames Moths' Facebook page,  Dave Morris, who noticed this highly unlikely arrival at the early 19th century window pane of 'The Other Bennet Sister', a BBC drama re-working Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice':

Barring an incredible feat of aviation from the Far East, this Box Tree Moth is roughly 200 years too early. It was first recorded in Europe in 2006, in Germany, and made its debut in the UK two years later. 

As Dave notes about the Collared Dove, another extra in historical films from time to time, this is worth pointing out, less for the error as an example of how carefully some of us watch TV.  It may be added that the Box Tree Moth is also appropriate to an Austen drama; so many stately homes of the kind portrayed in her books have had their garden hedges ruined by the species' voracious caterpillars. Spiky-penned Jane would surely have had something to say about this, or some human parallel to be made.

Penny and I were at a particularly beautiful and not much-frequented stately home today, Nuneham Courtenay near Oxford, where I spied this Comma among many Brimstones. They follow yesterday's Small Tortoiseshell to make three butterflies so far this year. Meanwhile the moth trap continues to attract a modest but respectable list of overnight guests, with a Brindled Beauty and Small Quaker joining the previously-recorded Hebrew Character, Common Quaker, Oak Beauty and Clouded Drab on this year's garden tally.

                                  

Mother's Day beauty; and my first night of moths in 2026

 

Hello world! I am back in action after a very leisurely start to the year, caused partly by days and days - and nights - of wet weather and partly by issues with my exceptionally faithful and long-lasting moth trap mercury vapour light bulb.

This is the all-important means of attracting moths, for reasons still debated by entomologists. In recent years, safety regulations have made the bulbs harder to get and I have been frankly too lazy to set about this task.

Luckily I don't need to, yet. Yesterday I cleared out our shed and found my box of MV bulbs, mostly expired and in some cases with a screw fitting instead of the pin one which my trap needs. On a whim, I decided to give the 'used' bulbs a final try. The first two were as dud as I had assumed. But the third works!

Hooray! And here is the first moth it has attracted in 2026, a lovely Oak Beauty.  I would have given it top billing but I had a delightful Mother's Day encounter with an exquisitely fresh Small Tortoiseshell  butterfly nectaring on Blackthorn, or Sloe, in a scruffy hedge bedecked with abandoned traffic cones where one of our local footpaths briefly skirts the A34.  So that picture heads the post.  

Here are just a few of the cones, below. We were taught at school that John Constable always included a small dash of red in his predominantly green, blue and brown landscapes.  So, to look on the bright side, he might well have welcomed these.

There were three other species in the eggboxes overnight and here they are: five Hebrew Characters, again fresh like the Tortoiseshell with their pinkish thoraxes, a Common Quaker and that unfortunately-named moth, a Clouded Drab.

Belated happy New Year!

Goodness, it's been a while since I posted. I have woken from my Winter torpor after a friend emailed from Brazil saying that he had been showing this blog to one of his friends. I felt ashamed that what they were seeing was so out of date.

There are a couple of reasons besides the slowing down which gradually comes with age. One is obvious: this is not a very interesting time of the year to be looking for moths. The other is technical: my mercury vapour bulb started playing up shortly after my last post in November and I have not yet sorted that out. It may limp on, or I may have to source a new one, which is getting harder because of various electrical regulations. 

Anyway, I have a moth picture! Actually two. They are not new although they were last Winter when I first came across a little colony of over-wintering Buttoned Snouts in the cobwebby gloom of an outbuilding. This week I was crawling around there and discovered that they are still happily settled.  My first two pictures show ones which I disturbed, the second rather worse for wear, no doubt after encounters with cobwebs and other obstacles in its dingy home.

They are not alone there, so far as insects are concerned. My activities triggered several bright flashes of colour as hibernating Peacock butterflies were disturbed. I'm glad to say that they went back to sleep, as the weather outside was foul and anything capable of hibernation was well-advised to keep slumbering.

 Here's another one in the house, disturbed when I got down a book and then choosing a dangerous new 'bed' in the event of grandchildren coming to stay. I carefully picked it up and tucked it away on a shelf, getting a fine display of those lovely wings before it folded them again and went back to sleep.

I have often said here that although human beings have the advantage over moths in most things, I am jealous of their antennae which we lack (unless they are hidden in our heads/brains; I am not qualified to rule on that). Hibernation is another quality which many of them have but none of us. Rip van Winkle, alas, was fiction.

Hello November

The weather is dodging about in true British fashion at the moment, fresh and crisp one evening and warm but moisty the next. Last night was very promising initially but shortly before midnight the rain came drumming down and I got up in my dressing gown and pyjamas to turn the light off before it fused.

Visitors continue to be many and varied as my first picture shows: from the top left, we have a male Feathered Thorn with his glorious antennae, a Green-brindled Crescent (one of the top moths in terms of numbers at the moment), a Large Yellow Underwing, a Beaded Chestnut, the micro Aethes smithmanniana, a probable Common Quaker very worn, a Sallow, a Black Rustic and a Red-green Carpet. As well as these, the eggboxes were home to numerous Autumnal and November Moths.

The Feathered Thorn is the current star of proceedings, four in the trap last night and all very freshly-hatched judging by their condition. One of them was still asleep upside down and I contrast it with the usual view in the photo above. The first pic below meanwhile suggests Macbeth's three witches, appropriately given that last night was Hallowe'en.

And then there were four...the one on the right below a lot friskier than the others and just starting its getaway which is under way in the second photo.

They were the only visitors apart from the Barred Sallow below, which adds its own small contribution to the variety of moths in the trap at this tailend of the year.

December already?

 

I was going to blame my ever-increasing age, because I had pretty much forgotten this phenomenon from last year. But then I remembered that I forget it every year and have done since I first switched the moth trap on back in 2005. What is it? The fact that far from petering out, the moths put on a great show of numbers and variety as October hands over to November. 

There is one novelty this year, shown in my first picture. This is my first December Moth of 2025, adding to the muddle over months, with November and Autumnal Moths already in residence for quite a while. My previous earliest was October 30 last year so that's only been beaten by three days, but the debut of many species has crept backwards on the calendar in recent years. Will this in due course be definitively linked to global warming?

Meanwhile here's one of the afore-mentioned Autumnal, November or Pale November Moths mentioned above, slumbering dangerously close to a parasitic Ichneumon Fly. Below, behold three brownish brethren from the varied and plentiful guest list: a Large Yellow Underwing, a Turnip Moth and a Red-line Quaker. 

Moving along the colour spectrum to green, we have a metallicy Green-brindled Crescent and two of that wonderful moth the Merveille du Jour, one of them snuggled up by a wasp just as my first this year, described in my last post, was guarded by a hornet. Lastly we have a Red Green Carpet, a very pretty and nicely-streamlined little moth.

Another carpet moth (originally named from Chinese patterned carpets arriving in 18th century England for the first time) is doing very well after colonising in the UK only relatively recently. Here it is below: the Cypress Carpet with its distinctive black flashes. They come every night just now.

A few more: three or four White-points come every night, the Black Rustic more seldom and the Feathered Thorn infrequently.  Finally, we have a last - I am pretty certain - Sallow of the year and a couple of Autumnla/November moths, one of them closeish up and showing how delicate their superficially boring grey patterning is.

Cautiously marvellous

 

The last Top Moth of the year has arrived as I hoped that it would, the wonderfully coloured and patterned Merveille du Jour. It has a high tolerance of pretty chilly Autumn weather and it certainly lifts the spirits of those of us creatures who prefer the warmth. Mind you, this year's arrival came in unusual circumstances as you can see above.

Our local hornets' nest sends a delegation to the light trap most nights at the moment and when I lifted the lid, a little later than usual, one of them was wakeful enough to scuttle under the protective cover of an eggbox. My kitchen tongues were to hand and I very gingerly moved the boxes, one by one. To my joy, I saw the Merveille; but it was in the very eggbox which the hornet and chosen as a hiding place.

Luckily the fearsome-looking insects are commendably docile in my experience and this one made no attempt to ward me off. I got my photo and then carefully placed the box under a beech hedge so that I could examine the other ones undisturbed. I was pretty sure from previous experience that it would buzz off within an hour so, hornets being marvels of the day ratrher than the night, and I've had no instances of the hornets attacking sleeping moths.

So it proved and I was able to move the Merveille to a drystone wall with lichen. Can you spot it above?  Here it is below from closer-up. It stayed there until lunchtime at least.

There has been quite a rush-hour of other moths in the last week, including the lurking Turnip and Sallow moths below, a micro whose ID I am still pursuing and another rather fine late Autumn regular, Blair's Shoulder-knot.

 

Here are a couple more pictures of the Shoulder-knot, the first one alongside an Autumnally russet Beaded Chestnut.

I've also played host to an Acleris variegana micro, known in the vernacular as the Garden Rose Tortrix though to me as the Love-heart Moth, a delicate and very pink-toned immigrant Vestal and a Brown-spot Pinion.

Here are a contrasting couple of many November/Winter moths, easy to dismiss as small, grey nonentities but often with clear and delicate patterns as in thie first example. The second is more the norm. Then we have a teeny-weeny Least Carpet and another micro, Carcina quercana or the Oak Longhorn, obligingly snoozing on the trap's transparent cowl and therefore shown from both above and below.

Finally, who knew that Green-brindled Crescents had eyes in the back of their heads? Not even me, until I took this pic of one snuggled deep inside an eggbox cone.