Boo!

The Yellow-tails are back with a vigorous second generation; a surprising name for a moth which on first inspection turns out to be largely white with just a few flecks of blackish brown. But wait. If a male wants to draw the attention of a nearby mate, look what happens, below.

One of the half-dozen examples in the trap conveniently fluttered off to a window of our shed when I tickled it with a leaf. Through the glass, you can see the end of its body more clearly. This is where moths mate, tail-to-tail, and it seems appropriate that the spot is marked by a little heart. 

Silver Ys have been turning up regularly, an immigrant moth in my youth but now established as a breeding resident. They are one of the most frequently-spotted dayflyers in the country, little whirrs of grey nectaring at wildflowers in the manner of Hummingbird Hawk moths albeit duller and less skilful. I was cycling to meet Penny yesterday after her tennis and I stalked and photographed just such a one. A few minutes earlier, I saw another Clouded Yellow butterfly, a feature of this sunny Summer, but missed the chance to photograph it.

There are some nice Autumnal colours in the moth trap these mornings although the forecasters are predicting a lovely September before the seasons change.  Here is a Brimstone moth followed by a Frosted Orange, a Centre-barred Sallow - one of the commonest of my brighter arrivals since mid-August - and a glowing Barred Sallow with a similar palette but differently painted.

I've also been pleased to find some characterful smaller moths in the last three days: a Vestal with its mauve angled stripe like the Roman Vestals' toga, first one in its usual resting position and then a second more unusually shown with wings half outstretched. Then a spiky-looking Cypress Carpet whose colour and patterns slightly resemble the eggbox barcode on which it slept,  a Chinese Character with the reason for its name glinting brightly, and its fellow 'bird-poo moth', a Lime-speck Pug.

The Box moth which is causing such hedge devastation still pays weekly calls in spite of a neighbour successfully preserving her hedge - very unusually in my experience - by the patient chore of checking it daily for caterpillars and killing them. Then we have a couple of many Willow Beauties which appear night after night. Note the much-exaggerated, different colour as the otherwise excellent iPhone plays its digital tricks with the light.

Another very common moth at the moment is the Flounced Rustic, below, followed by its less common relative, the Square-spot Rustic.

Elsewhere in the busy Natural world, here is a neighbour's tortoise ravenously devouring a dandelion, a quartet of heron pictures from a wander round Wolvercote Lakes, a delightful small nature reserve, and a Nursery Web Spider,  also known as the Cunning Spider and Bridal Gift Spider. The names sound like something from a sinister murder story but actually come from the complex mating process, although this is a risky business in which death can occur.  I can do not better than quote Wikipedia before ending this post with a classic piece of 'art bollocks' involving a spider-like lemon squeezer whose use rather resembles the messy procedures of the mating Nursery Web.

'Males of this species offer a nuptial gift to potential female mates. Some Pisaura mirabilisspecimens have also been observed to use thanatosis during courtship.After presenting the nuptial gift to the female, she bites on to the gift and the male moves to her epigyne to deposit sperm with his pedipalps. Throughout copulation, the male keeps a leg on the gift so as to be ready if she tries to escape with it or attack him. At this time, the male may feign death – his limbs become straight and he is dragged along with the female while holding on to the gift. When the female stops, the male slowly "resurrects" and continues attempting to mate.'

Elegant arches

 

A distinguished visitor at the beginning of every September is the Feathered Gothic, which I consider to be my 'architecture moth' because of the way it almost exactly imitates the framework of a mediaeval Gothic church window.  The fact that it fills the gaps between its lines with modest shades of grey and even black only adds to its appeal as a design type. Varied or bright colouring would risk cheapening the effect.

Its caterpillars form a sort of lawnmower as grass is their foodplant and they start eating the blades and then creep down when a little older and demolish the stem. Perhaps this slender diet inspires the narrow lines of the wing design. I don't suppose that this thought could ever be proved. But equally, it probably can't be disproved either.

Another seasonal regular is the September Thorn, above, the plainest of the interesting Thorn family whose members share this crouching posture, a little butterfly-like in the holding of the wings above the body rather than flatly folded across it like most UK moths. Alongside it in the trap last night were a couple of Small Blood-veins, a third species which flies towards the end of the Summer.

The most interesting moth in this post, however, called on a neighbour rather than myself. She emailed me anxiously with the photo below, asking if the insect was in some way crippled or damaged when emerging from its chrysalis. The answer is no; it is the delightful and very distinctive Lilac Beauty which adopts this curious creased and folded-back technique on the leading edge of its forewings when at rest. The effect makes excellent camouflage as it resembles a dead leaf.

I have only ever had a Lilac Beauty here once, in July 2013, and here is its photograph below. I posted about it at the time and you can read that here, time and interest permitting.

Always on the go

Perpetual motion doesn't exist as I understand it, although I am no scientist, but the Hummingbird Hawk moth comes as close to achieving it as anything I have seen. I have spent much enjoyable time trying to photograph these busy nectar-feeders as they dart about on sunny afternoons and only once have I seen one stop in flight.

Today's photos are rare for me, therefore, taken thanks to Penny spotting the familiar triangle sight of a moth afloat in a puddle caused by this week's extremely welcome rain. When we carefully salvaged the inect and put it gently on a plant, it came to rather erratic life, staggering about but unable to use its soaked wings. These later dried-out but here is the moth pictured while it was immobile with its hair looking slicked with Brylcreem. 

It brings my hawk moth tally for this year to six, along with the Poplar, Privet, Large Elephant, Eyed and Lime; a modest total compared to previous Summers which have seen both the Pine and Small Elephant arrive regularly and, once, a Broad-bordered Bee hawk. I still dream of Silver-striped and Convolvulus which others have hosted during thi sunny Summer but not me. So far.

The unexpected arrives more often than usual, however, and I have just had a modest example of that on a walk across Walthamstow Marshes from my younger son's home in Clapton to a niece's in Walthamstow. The parched landscape resembled Death Valley more than anything watery and I didn't expect to find much of interest en route.

Instead, I first glimpsed this little dot of red in the overwhelming sandy-brown, then watched a Clouded Yellow fly hectically past and managed to photograph a Small White, Small Copper and lovely Common Blue.  I have often remarked on how beautiful these are in spite of their dismissive name. The same goes for Holly Blues which have become one of the dominant butterfly species of the English suburb. 

There were flowers dotted about the apparent desert and the butterflies had found them out.

Back home, the moth trap is busy but pretty routine and here are some visitors from the last few days. In each case clockwise from the top left, we have have Flounced Rustic,  Single-dotted Wave, European Corn-borer and Gold Triangle, the last two both micros which I am now describing by their very welcome vernacular names instead of the heavy duty Greek and Latin mixture of the Linnaean system.

Then we have Light Emerald, Black-headed Conch, Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing and Straw Underwing

Next Willow Beauty, Spectacle, Red Twin-spot Carpet and Common Carpet

And finally, a Riband Wave in two forms of the digital camera's light-gathering,  a vivid Purple and Gold and a spidery-looking Orange Swift.

Incy Wincy

I was so intoxicated by the beauty of the Adonis Blues in my last post that I missed the most interesting detail in my photos. By contrast, it was spotted at once by a nurse in intensive care which I was visiting this week.

Here it is, above. Among the butterflies which I photographed was this inert one on a stem of grass which at first I took to be dead. When I examined it more carefully (but not carefully enough!), this turned out not to be the case. In my relief, I carefully removed it and placed it on the leaves of a scrubby bit of hawthorn, out of sight.

What I failed to notice was that it had been entangled by a spider, a small creamy-white crab spider which the ICU nurse saw straight away. Here it is in more detail from my main photo with apologies for the blurring:

Eek! A reminder both to be more careful and of the unsentimental and dangerous world in which the small clouds of Adonis Blues live at Yoesden nature reserve, a little paradise in the Chilterns. A paradise with a serpent, or at least a spider.

I need to remember such lessons in patience to pass on to the family, friends and neighbours who have been sending me pictures recently of the current crop of caterpillars searching for somewhere to pupate. Here are, respectively, an Elephant Hawk moth larva (initially mistaken for animal poo), a spectacular Pale Tussock cattie and one of the 'woolly bear' family spotted zooming across a shingly beach by great-nieces and a great-nephew in the Western Isles:

My sister and family on holiday in Sweden have meanwhile been enjoying a butterfly paradise, with Camberwell Beauties (my most revered UK species), High Brown Fritillaries, which I once caught as a schoolboy on the British Camp in Herefordshire, and that fascinating species, the Map Butterfly. This has two startlingly different seasonal forms, the July one shown here by an artist, Helen Kejser Højlund, whose studio my sister discovered on a long bike ride in Denmark; and the earlier May generation, shown in a photo from Wikipedia. 

I initially mistook Helene's picture for a Scandinavian White Admiral but then remembered the sad story of how this butterfly was successfully introduced to the Forest of Dean and Symond's Yat in 1912 but then ruthlessly hunted down by an eccentric collector, Albert Farn, who bore grudges against several contemporary entomologists and believed that no foreign butterfly or moth should be introduced to the UK.

As the great Professor Edmund Ford says in his masterful book Butterflies in the Collins New Naturalist Series: "His arbitrary action was an improper one; for he should at least have consulted a considerable body of entomologists, for example the Royal Entomological Society, before taking a step which was by no means his personal business alone."   Ford adds how interesting the Map is and what a welcome addition it would be to the UK's very limited number of butterflies and concludes: "I would not object to a further attempt being made to naturalise it in this country."  Perhaps someone might heed that clarion call.