Fluttering by

 

This is the best time of the year for spotting beautiful and still reassuringly common butterflies, sometimes easy to see because of their lovely colours and sometimes betrayed only by sudden, fluttering movement. The Orange-tip is one of the daintiest and it comes laden with memories for anyone who has enjoyed its company for over seventy years. I remember them first as companions at the start of school's Summer term, along with bluebells and cow parsley.

As so often in the Animal Kingdom, the male gets the best deal with the actual orange tips to his forewings, but the female is also exquisitely coloured. The one above made its way into our shed where I keep the moth trap safe from robins, and had a brief panic among the spiders' webs before I cupped my hands and let her out. The male was one of many which welcomed her back among the garden flowers.

Holly Blues are traditional companions of the Orange-tips, emerging from the chrysalis at the same time and in equally large numbers. The little, jinking flashes of bright blue which you see along hedges and borders will be Hollies; they emerge a month or so earlier than our other small blue butterflies.

They have one annoying habit which is almost always preferring to rest with their wings folded vertically over their backs, concealing the glorious bright blue of their topwings. The underside is lovely too; a chalky blue with a delicate arrangement of dots as shown in the top left picture above. But the bright blue is what I want to see. 

I managed it by making a short video with my iPhone and then taking still pictures from the clip, also above. But the result is a little blurred. Then yesterday, walking alongside a suburban beech hedge in Oxford to meet Penny, I spotted several Holly Blues and fortuitously stalked the one below. A lovely, freshly-emerged female, she kicked the folded-wing trend and posed; not just for a moment but patiently; and for a second time after initially fluttering on. Thank you!

My third day-flyer caught my attention when we were chatting with neighbours in the sunshine and i saw a scrap of greeny-grey fluttering around a patch of unmown scrub. As soon as it was polite to do so, i slipped away and followed the insect which seemed inexhaustible but finally settled down on a shady stretch of hedge. I crept up very slowly but needn't have taken so much care. having used up a vast amount of energy on its flying meander, this little Green Carpet moth settled down for a long rest.

Can you see it in my first picture below? So long as they do not move, resting moths and butterflies are usually very hard to find.

Here it is, closer-to.  This one was conforming exactly to online descriptions of the species which, like other Carpet moths, was named in the late 18th century when rolls of carpet were arriving in England from the Far East with patterns as wonderfully intricate as this little creature's. The moth flies at night - and there are lots of them in the trap just now - but is easily disturbed by day and often takes to the wing shortly before dusk. That was when we and the neighbours were chatting. I checked again after a 15 minute ramble and it was still on the same leaf, slumbering away.

Two more interesting newcomers for the year in the trap meanwhile; a Pale Prominent with its craggy outline when at rest, and a male Pale Tussock, a hairy moth with a hairy caterpillar which vexed the hop-pickers in days gone by and gave rashes to those with sensitive skin. Mind you, they were pinching its favourite food.

India's Pride and the Aphids

 

You can tell the size of this delicate little creature when I tell you that the sharpened wooden pole is a small cocktail stick, above and below. 

Like axolotls, the current Pet of Choice in inventive families, it has an endearing 'face' but I am afraid that it is not endearing to me.  It was spotted by an eagle-eyed cousin on a photo which I posted on Instagram and Facebook of my triumphant nurturing of a seed of the blossom tree Pride of India, or Koelreuteria paniculata which I collected from a noteworthy example of the species back in the Autumn. This is the Pride of India which flourishes in the University Parks in Oxford and was the first tree in that lovely place to be given a plaque. 

That was in 1999 when the tree, planted four years earlier, was dedicated to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi who was born 125 years earlier in October 1869.

The round, black, bullet-like seeds were abundant at the foot of the tree and easy to collect and Penny and I had a motive as we had recently guided a party of mid-career students from India round various lesser-known sites in Oxford.  If all goes well, we will germinate enough to give one or two to St Cross College where the fellowships are based. We were extremely pleased when a very complex process of preparing the seeds, starting with boiling water and 13 weeks in the fridge, resulted in a small green seedling poking up its head and then developing very fast. 

My cousin zeroed in on the little speck of slightly different green on the small leaf at the front of the plant in the big picture above.  Enlarged below, you can see the aphid clearly. And I removed another three.  I'm now keeping a careful watch and a second seed has sent out a promising-looking seedling. If I were an aphid, I would want to eat such enticing salad. But that is not going to be allowed.

Meanwhile a friend in Brazil has sent some marvellous photos of a Three-toed Sloth, rescued from a road on to which it had somehow strayed. It was slightly happier on a wall which was nearer to its natural home up in a tree.  You can see its endearing face and strange gymnastics in the composite picture below, after an enlargement which shows clearly the reason for its name.  For Scrabble players, it will be familiar as an Ai, its other name which is officially accepted by the game's governing body as a useful two-letter word for using up tiles or finding a slot on a jammed board.

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.