A Pebble in the Hand

The grandchildren put in an appearance at the weekend so the hands which often provide a backdrop to my moth pictures are younger and fresher than usual. I'm relieved nonetheless to see that even at such a tender age, they have a few wrinkles.  Well, lines anyway. Sadly, I have never mastered the art of reading them.

The first one, above, is playing host to a Pebble Prominent, a nicely distinctive member of a fine family. This example is showing more hindwing than usual because it was getting a bit fed up and wanting to take off. It duly did, spiralling away erratically towards our telegraph pole to much applause. Luckily our robins were elsewhere.

Next up is a Muslin moth showing the yellow knee-breeches which add a discreet flash of colour to its otherwise austere colouring. This has been much the most numerous visitor in the trap in the last couple of weeks. This one played dead convincingly which gave us the chance to photograph its tummy, below. It's very welcome when you have time - and the patience - to photograph the moths from unusual angles because of the unexpected details often revealed.

A final piece of skin, my own I think, appears in this picture of a Brindled Beauty which kipped overnight alongside a new species for the year, a Shuttle-shape Dart with the neat reason for its name clearly showing on its folded forewing in the second picture below. It went in for a little playing-dead too.

When we were getting various garden games out of our shed, we rescued this female Orange Tip which was beating its wings against the windows while the resident spiders watched in anticipation. It was useful to explain to the children that the absence of any orange denoted a female which lacks the gaudy tips of the male but shares their exquisite grey-green patterning on her underwing.

Two treats: Chocolate and Giant Orchids

The Chocolate-tip moth is a reason to be cheerful, partly on account of its appealing name and partly because its colours and patterning are delightful. Horns and a tail and that neat splash of ruby or dark crimson. It must be one of those cocktail chocolates.

It has an interesting distribution in our relatively small island. We in the South get it now and in May with a second brood in August and September.  It misses out the North but then reappears in Scotland with a smaller population which flies in June and July.

It arrived here with a Frosted Green, also an interesting moth because I think that the green is partly an optical effect rather than the actual colour. Although the moth is greenish from distance, on close inspection it has a very complicated mixture of black and grey scales whose contrast helps the eye to either see or imagine extra colour.  An example of this is currently on show at the Royal Academy in the excellent exhibition of paintings by the 17th century Flemish artist Michaelina Wautier.

Her set of paintings of the five senses, represented by boys doing such things as wrinkling up the nose at an off egg or recoiling from the touch of blood on a cut hand, includes this recorder player whose scarf looks blue but actually has none of the colour. Ultramarine paint was very expensive at the time and Wautier skilfully contrasted a variety of grays to create the illusion. Clever stuff!  And in the case of the Frosted Green, very good for camouflage.

Separately, we fulfilled an ambition last week by visiting the only place in the UK where the Giant Orchid grows, or I should say the only known place. There is a lot in our country's natural world which remains hidden because too few knowledgable explorers are about. We were told about the orchids by one such, the late Christopher Hoskin, and planned to go with him this year to see them. Alas he died last year, a great loss to his friends and the community of those who love Nature.  

We were hectic last month when the plants flowered but got to the site in time to photograph their fine spikes. A real treat, and it was easy to imagine the gentle presence of Chris being there too. He had warned us that the site was extremely steep, especially for those in their seventies, and so it proved. But we slithered down on our behinds and scrabbled and clawed our way back up and left very satisfied.

Giant Orchids grow in the Mediterranean where they earn their name by rising to the height of a metre or more. Not so in England, but they are still impressive. Locals remember them first appearing some 20 years ago, perhaps by deliberate seed-scattering, but they then vanished, only to recur in the early 2020s and flower annually since.

Almost twins - but not quite

 

The beautiful Prominent moths with their streamlined shape and purposeful resting position always provide some of my earliest stars in the trap. Here are two which can very easily be confused as one: the Swallow Prominent at the top and the Lesser Swallow Prominent below.  The most obvious difference is the thicker white spearhead on the Lesser moth red arrow below) but note, too, the more complex patterning in the dark area at the bottom right of the folded-back forewing (yellow arrow).

The eggboxes are gradually getting busier as Spring goes on and the weather warms up. Here are some recent guests: a Lunar Marbled Brown, a Nut-tree Tussock, an Early Grey (always reminds me of tea), a Common Quaker and again with a Clouded Drab and finally another Common Quaker in very good, fresh condition and a Brindled Beauty resting on a box of very good value eggs.

Away from moths, P and I had an interesting encounter with flies at an open garden in the pretty village of Kencot near Lechlade whose owner kept pigs. That meant dung which in turn meant dung flies, in this case a particularly vivid species, at least in the brilliant sunshine which blessed the event. Other visitors thought that they were horse flies and kept well away, but my trusty iPhone identified them, not surprisingly, as Yellow Dung Flies.  They were almost beautiful; indeed the insect is also actually also known as the Golden Dung Fly - and they went nicely with much larger flying objects thundering down overhead at regular intervals on their approach to Brize Norton air base. Dung flies are extremely useful in preventing the world being encrusted with animal poo.

Spiders next. We were visited that evening by the biggest spider we've seen in this house since we moved here in 2013.  Appropriately, like the Yellow Dung Fly, it is a Giant House Spider, not so giant, however, that it could avoid P's handy spider-catcher with electronic suction.  Once bottled, it was popped outside in the garden, thus becoming at least for a while, a Giant Garden Spider instead.

And lastly, beetles. This exquisite jewel of an Alder Leaf Beetle was an unintended bonus on a posy of common wildlfowers which I picked for friends after walking along the canal to their home in Oxford.

Warming up

 

Three days of delicious sunshine were followed by a genuinely warm night on Wednesday and the result was by far the best residents' list in the moth trap. Above we have Streamer, Early Tooth-striped, Least Black Arches, Frosted Green, Muslin, Nut-tree Tussock, Chestnut, Pale Prominent and Early Thorn.

The second picture shows Swallow Prominent, Lunar Marbled Brown, Clouded Drab, Early Grey and Oak-tree Pug. Meanwhile we enjoyed a lovely visit to the village open gardens in Kencot, near Lechlade, where we spotted these flies happily swarming on the dung of the Manor Farm's spotted pigs. Can you guess their name?

Yes, the Yellow Dung Fly. Vivid yellow they are indeed. Vastly outweighing them up above was another sort of flying object, a vast transporter aircrraft from nearby RAF Brize Norton.

Hell Fire Lovelies

My butterfly count has jumped up to seven with a visit to West Wycombe and the gloriously dotty Hell Fire Caves made famous by Sir Francis Dashwood, the only Chancellor of the Exchequer to admit presenting the Budget to the House of Commons while drunk.

The butterflies were appropriately drunk themselves in the warmth and sunshine of the current almost high-summery weather. Here they are: a Brimstone imitating a leaf very skilfully, a male Orange-tip (the female has to make do with white and black speckles on her top forewings, though elegntly patterned with grey-green below), a Comma, a Peacock, a male Holly Blue (without the female's smudgy black wing tips) and another Brimstone, sulphurous rather than buttery and therefore a male.  My other two species so far in 2026 are Small Tortoisehell and Green-veined White.  Oh and I was led a dance by the Speckled Wood below in the bluebell woods of Appleton and Besselsleigh today.

Back at home, my greedy companion at moth-inspecting time, this robin, has twigged much earlier than in previous years that unless defended very vigilantly, the trap may provide him with nibbles.

On the happier side, the garden is wonderfully full of nectar-rich treats which attracted my latest moth species for the year, the March Moth in the centre of the composite picture and on my delicate fingers below.

 Other arrivals in the last week include this trio: a Red Chestnut, a Pale Pinion and an Early Grey. 

Back at West Wycombe the ugly but remarkable flint walls of the Dashwood mausoleum currently house many thousands of ladybirds in their quoins.  Here's a small sample. Earlier in the week on an Easter Treasure Hunt, our youngest grandson found about ten eggs and ten times that number of ladybirds. The sun has ended their winter sleep. Aphids beware!

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.