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.

Marvel on Cue

The moth recording season in the UK is drawing to a close, not with a bang or a whimper but graced by the beautiful species above whose arrival is always one of my last annual treats. Its name is as lovely as its physical beauty, the Merveille du Jour, although as I have faithfully and pedantically observed every year, like Cato on Carthage, it is actually a Merveille du Nuit.

This year it made its debut with excellent timing, appearing on cue for a 'moth breakfast which we have been trying to arrange with a couple of friends for a while. October is not the best month for people to come and see what my lamp has attracted, even if Penny's croissants are outstanding. The chances of a small or dull guest list were quite high.

Instead the Merveille turned up, or rather three of them did, and our guests were delighted to see the lovely colours and patterns at close range and in no rush. One of them is the granddaughter of a very distinguished entomologist at the world-famous Rothampsted research centre and her father was an expert on weeds while an uncle knew more about pondweed than pretty much anyone else in the world.

They took a couple of Merveilles with them to their home in North Oxford where, with luck, they may start a new colony. I noticed on the Upper Thames Moths' Facebook page the other day that a fellow-enthusiast was finding many more moths coming to the light-trap at his new home on Boar's Hill, overlooking the city, than he ever had in central Oxford. He particularly cited the Merveille du Jour. So perhaps my two colonists will start to put that right.  

We also had a nice range of other delightful or interesting moths, among them the following, clockwise from top left in each composite pic:

Autumnal Rustic, Satellite - quite a light brown example of a species which is usually darker, Beaded Chestnut with its wings unusually half open and its abdomen tip - the mating zone - tilted up. This is a posture more often found in smaller moths such as the Carpets. And lastly a Red-line Quaker, appropriately modest in colouring but smart.

Then we had a Brindled Green, a Lesser Treble-bar, the long-lasting hedge-terror the Box Moth which has been visiting since early Summer, and a Green-brindled Crescent with its glinting green metallic wing scales.

We weren't the only enthusiasts for a moth breakfast. Our resident Robin was ready and waiting too, although he clearly concluded that four human brings were too much to challenge, rather than just the usual solitary, elderly one.

Flaring up

I have had two experiences of flaring colours in the last week, one little more than the size of my thumbnail, the other taking up hundreds of thousands of miles of sky. The first is a Red-green Carpet, a scrap of a moth which I can admire for ages because the colours and patterns are so subtle and fine.

The second was the sunset that night, a fantastic display of red and orange and pink with a little blue to make the palette more intriguing. Since my earliest years, I have marvelled that we get this free display on so many evenings, and often something similar at dawn.  

Its effect on moths' behaviour is a matter of debate but I imagine that alternative sources of bright light reduce the moth trap's attractions while they last. That is often said of the Moon and I keep meaning to attempt some sort of scientific study of catches at the full and new moons. I fear that it will have to wait until next year. Ditto a study of temperatures and moth variety and numbers after this exceptionally sunny and dry Summer.

Inside the gloomy recesses of the trap, with its circle of black plastic wall, I have been treated to some good shows of colour too.  Here are the remains of a Yellow Shell against the beautiful background of my pyjamas (my thumb addimg scale), followed by the shining golden spaceship markings of a Satellite, so exactly like the alien craft which we targeted in the old 'shoot 'em up' game of Space Invaders.

Next we have a Beaded Chestnut, a gently glowing moth, the Rosy Tabby micro aka Endrotricha flammealis, and a lovely Treble Brown-spot, one of the 'Laura Ashley moths' reminiscent of girls in wafty milkmaid dresses in the 1960s.

About the half the size of that is this Double-striped Pug below; the second picture with the trap bulb and my lovely hand gives you a notion of the scale, I hope. Then we shift gear abruptly to a gloomy Deep Brown Dart and a second one which has had a rough time with birds by the look of its wings.

And so, by way of a Pale Tussock caterpillar showing its appealing face, to the brightest sight of the week: another of the many, vigorous-flying Clouded Yellows which have reached Oxfordshire in one of their 'invasion' years.  These go back in the records to 1868 when the future Reverend Harrison, then a boy of 11, sat on a sea cliff at Marazion in Cornwall and saw “a yellow patch out at sea, which as it came nearer showed itself to be composed of thousands of Clouded Yellows, which approached flying close over the water, rising and falling over every wave till they reached the cliffs, when I was surrounded by clouds which settled on every flower…”  The butterfly, which had previously been known as the Spotted Saffron, was dulygiven its current name.

Yet another new arrival

I have no right to expect a wholly new moth at this time of the year but here we are: my first-ever Clancy's Rustic, a species which only made known landfall in the UK in 2002. Who spotted it? A Mr Clancy, of course; a mighty name in the modern world of moths who had the knowledge to be sure that this was something different when it visited his light trap in Kent.

I had the same conviction this morning because although I am famously hopeless at sorting out the subtle differences between brown and grey moths and their often confusingly similar patterns, I was sure that I had not seen this before. 

Here, above, is Mr Clancy himself, a chap who has done a tremendous amount to spread interest in moths, including co-founding the excellent magazine Antropos which gave me the term 'Flight Arrivals' for regular records of incoming moths. I don't think that he will ever match Dr Kenneth Blair, the late head of entomology at the Natural History Museum, who has three moths named after him because he made their first known UK findings, living at the very busy Flight Arrivals spot of Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. But he certainly deserves the Rustic.

The moth has long been known to wider science, unsurprisingly, and was one of 193 (and 52 butterflies) identified by the cheery-faced entomologist above, Christian Friedrich Freyer, who worked in Augsburg. In 1836, he gave it the sonorous name of Caradrina Kadenii, taken from the Balkan river Drin and an entomological colleague of Freyer's in Dresden, Karl Kaden. In German it's called Kaden's Owlet.  I could go on and on, but I'm very happy to add this guest to my list.

It was a good night in other respects, nice and warm in this Indian Summer which we are enjoying, and with other arrivals including a Brick, above, which calls on me only seldom. Then we have a Box Tree moth, the notorious hedge scourge, peeping at you, a rich and lustrous Black Rustic which would grace a funeral cortège (maybe I should have badges of them made for mine), a Mother of Pearl micro, a Snout and a Rosy Rustic:

The eggboxes also provided shelter for a Yellow-tail (hiding the reason for its name, as almost always), a Red-green Carpet, a Gold Triangle Moth micro and a White-point, the last rather like the Brick but with white spots instead of grey-black.

Oh and an unusually restful hoverfly, Helophilus Pendulus, whose name - since I'm so heavily into nomenclature today - means 'Dangling Marsh-lover'.

Finally, as one of the Caesars no doubt remarked and as regular readers certainly know, I can never resist a Vestal. Here's a composite of a lovely one of these delicate annual immigrants from the continental mainland which stayed the night. It has ever so slightly got its fringed white knickers in a twist.