Fur-coated Finale

I always think of the December Moth as the last of my annual regular guests, although I still have the Sprawler due, a moth named after the habits of its caterpillar rather than a gent in a London club, dozing in an armchair over his glass of port.

The December Moth is perhaps better-suited to such metaphors, with its rich fur coat in chocolately colours; a welcome change from the governess greys of the November and Autumnal family who form the vast majority of arrivals at present and will continue to do so in the coming weeks. 

There is still a little colour around, including Merveille du Jours such as the one below with its enemy the Robin perched on the garden roller behind. I have mentioned previously the slightly brown tinge which I have seen in some of this year's Merveilles and that continues as they age and fade, as shown in the examples in the second photo below:

The one on the left is the Brownie; not strikingly different from the standard form on the right but enough for me to notice. Here are some close -ups of the standard form on the top row and the Brownie below. Note that the black and white fringe which marks most freshly-emerged moths and butterflies has completely worn away in the later specimens.

The occasional Silver Y calls in too, a moth which I have known longer than any other, first seen as a child on Summer brmble flowers near our home in Leeds. Ditto the odd Green-brindled Crescent, another reason to stay cheerful as the weather gets colder and wetter, thanks to its metallic green wing scales.

Can a fly be beautiful? I dislike the buzzing, irritating things as much as most people, but this one's golden circles really struck me when I saw it in the trap. It's a Noonday Fly which starts life as a solitary egg in a fresh cowpat - the adult lays just one per pat - where the maggot lives on smaller dungeaters like an underworld character in a novel by Emile Zola. 

While we're on such creatures, here is a late, sleepy wasp, always a sting hazard if I am clumsy with the eggboxes, and an ichneumon fly which has the horrible habit of injecting its egg into other insects such as moths and using them as a living larder for its family.  The Noonday Fly in my picture above is being approached in a menacing fashion by another one.

I'll end up with another example of moths in culture, a printing plate from the Royal Worcester museum which we enjoyed visiting last month, a Lacewing having a rest and finally one of the most unfortunate forms of life in terms of a name in the UK: the Dog's Vomit Slime Mould, known as Witches' Butter in Finland, Holland and some other parts of the Continent. Suitable for Hallowe'en...

 

Curled up Cattie

 

The march of moths through global culture continues apace: while I persist in my efforts to track down the caterpillar which stars in the opening sequence of the latest Sense and Sensibility film. The Economist's obituary the other week (a rather over-stylised column but let that pass) kicked of with a moth and an interesting story about it.  

On cue I found a brightly-coloured cattie myself just now, although it showed no inclination to explore my fingers. I have to admit that they are a bit less appealing than those of the young woman playing Marianne in the film. but maybe caterpillars don't see it that way, and its inertia was just due to the cold.

My iPhone Bug ID suggests that it will turn into a Large Yellow Underwing and iRecord has just concurred when I uploaded a couple of photos and the identity there. By happy chance, the egg boxes also contained this chap below, an adult Large Yellow Underwing, whose identity only became apparent in the third and last photo, although you can see the yellow and black pattern dimly from below in the second image.

From yellow to green, and here is a Merveille du Jour, still brightening up the trap as we move towards Hallowe'en and November.

Then a Winter/November/Autumnal moth first pretending to be a butterfly and then in its usual resting pose, followed by a Cypress Pug, a Light Brown Apple Moth micro and a Turnip moth.

And to finish up with a Harvestman with his family, now all expelled outdoors with the help of Penny's wonderful and supposedly humane suction-operated spider-catcher. I hope that a change of temperature will be merely bracing for them.

Sense, Sensibility - and a Caterpillar

 My current project, given the worsening weather and darker mornings which limit the moth trap's appeal, is trying to identify the humble caterpillar which gloriously opens the new film version of Sense and Sensibility. It is a high honour for a humble creature and one made all the better by the amount of comment which it has prompted, such as this intro from a piece in the Economist.

The little scene illustrates the wild, impulsive and curious nature of Marianne Dashwood's 'sensibility' as opposed to her sister Elinor's sound 'sense'. In days gone by, the girl would more likely have been shown delighting in a rabbit's bobtail or a soaring hawk. Hooray that caterpillars are having their day in the sunshine! The task now is to find out, in the current absence of an online clip which actually shows the little chap, what he or she is. 

And it's only a few months since a Box-tree Moth, dreaded destroyer of neat hedges, made an anachronistic appearance in another Jane Austen film, as noted by eagle-eyed fellow-moth enthusiast Dave Morris here.  Meanwhile, I have a humbler domestic ID task with these two caterpillars below, which I rescued from a puddle in our rain-soaked garden.

I've sent a guess to iRecord which has a useful system of suggesting something more likely. In due course, I may get an expert ID but if not, it will not be the end of the world. Telling this sort of caterpillar apart is a terrible way of passing the time.  Ditto with the very worn moth below, and with worn adults generally. Their markings can fade and their wings get torn with a thoroughness which can ultimately make certainty impossible. 

I am 99 percent sure that this is a Sallow and my unfailing expert Dave Wilton on Upper Thames Moths concurs; but I feature it just because of the marvellous range of suggestions from the Bug ID on my iPhone. I do not really like to poke fun at this facility because it has often been a tremendous help. But perhaps it is good to highlight the limitations of AI at a time when the typically OTT world of journalism and social media is convinced that the robots are going to wipe us out. 

So here's the list.  All wrong, some wildly so: Dun-bar, Orange Swift, Acanalonia bivittata, the two-striped planthopper, Corn earworm (US-speak), Canary-shouldered Thorn, Forest semilooper (endemic to NZ), White-speck and Twin-spotted Quaker. Fiddlesticks!

Turning to other arrivals: Behold a Silver Y, a Chestnut, a Turnip, a Feathered Thorn, a couple of Autumnal/November/Winter moths and a Centre-barred Sallow, the last bringing a scrap of cheerful colour as the year winds down. 

Pieces of Eight

                               

We have a curious structure in our garden which may one day be famous. Called Fort Hansard, it stands on what is probably the highest-point in our low-lying hamlet and the reason for that is also the origin of its name. My father Richard was a Liberal MP in an era when members were given bound copies of Hansard, the Parliamentary record, and we inherited a veritable shed-load of these handsome books which no-one in the world seemed to want. 

We tried pubs, schools and secondhand bookshops, gave some to family and friends and kept others which included some of the speeches he made, but in the end, we decided to bury the remainder and crown the resulting hillock with a wooden, US Cavalry-style fort. There are an awful lot of subterranean books under the ethereal-looking structure below and our secret hope is that one day archaeologists will stumble upon them and debate why the UK Parliament appears to have met on the outer edge of Oxford between 1966 and 1987.

The reason for telling you this, is that for the first time in our 13 years here, I put the moth trap inside Fort Hansard and its eerie glow, as shown below, brought me yet another wholly new moth, the Figure of Eight above. 

I recognised something wholly unfamiliar when I first clocked it, clinging to the side of an eggbox as shown below. My iPhone's Bug ID came up with the manifestly wrong suggestion of an Oak Beauty, which looks very different and does not fly at this time of the year. But some good, old-fashioned work with the Moth Bible came up trumps and I have, most unexpectedly, notched up my eighth entirely new macro-moth this year.

Here are some further photos which perhaps show the reason for its name more clearly. Meanwhile my pleasure is increased by the interest shown on Upper Thames Moths, albeit for unexpected reasons. The group's tireless expert Dave Wilton commented on the Facebook page:  "Surprising when you consider how much blackthorn you've got close by." This is true, and accounts for the marvellous presence of Black Hairstreak butterflies here. Dave goes on to say that although the Figure of Eight is supposedly a species in serious decline, the Upper Thames is one of its hotspots. He says: "I've trapped three local woods over the past week and it was by far the most numerous moth, with more than 100 coming to light in each location." 

More than 100! And I've had just one...  Well here's some more of it, though I restrained myself from taking a hundred pictures:

A couple of other Upper Thames trappers joined the discussion, each with a solitary arrival like me. Anyway, it's most welcome and joins my much more frequent guest the Figure of 80, below showing (slightly faintly) the reason for its name, a moth which is unrelated except through nomenclature.

The trap has meanwhile remained busy in spite of markedly colder nights. Here are some current regulars, left to right in each line: Cypress Carpet, Satellite, Green-brindled Crescent, Lesser Yellow Underwing, Lunar Underwing, White-spot, Autumnal Rustic, Large Wainscot and Feathered Thorn.

And then: Pale Mottled Willow, Black Rustic, Winter/Autumnal, Red-green Carpet, Rosy Rustic, Autumnal/November, Large Yellow Underwing, Merveille du Jour and Sallow.