Greece 10 - England 14

We have just had ten lovely days on the Greek island of Hydra, basking in sweltering temperatures but managing to keep up our walking tally because a beach or a taverna or both lay at the end of every trek. I always enjoy discovering the butterflies, moths and other creatures on overseas holidays and Hydra came up trumps with a new species for me.

It's the delicate little Blue shown above; not blue in the picture, because like almost all the members of this delicate, fast-flying species it likes to rest with its wings folded, hiding its vivid topwings. Actually it was Penny who spotted this one, using her legendary powers as our Finder of Insects Indoors; in this case, it was fluttering about on the glazed glass of our little studio's front door. 

It's a Zebra Blue, also known as Lang's Short-tailed Blue (you can just see the short tail between the 'eyes'), or the Plumbago Blue, the last name being appropriate in our case as a lovely big plumbago towered over the house. The underside patterning is absolutely delightful and repays a long leisurely look.

My second favourite of the holiday was an old but always lovely familiar, the Scarce Swallowtail, which coincidentally has a rather zebra-like pattern too, though the name Zebra Swallowtail is taken by another relative found only in Canada and the United States. We don't get the Scarce in the UK and our native Swallowtail is of course a great rarity here. I saw a couple of them on Hydra but did not get the chance of a photo.

Here, however, is my Scarce Swallowtail which obligingly nectared at a nearby plumbago while we were tucking into a Greek salad at a lunchtime beach taverna. I zoomed over with my iPhone after glimpsing it halting its majestic, swooping flight, to the interest of other lunchers.

A more familiar butterfly on Greek Summer holidays is the little Geranium Bronze, faithful to its foodplant and recently recorded in the South of the UK, and spreading northwards here. There were lots of these darting about and flying in pairs - either courting or males fighting - and also plenty of Common Blues nectaring on swags of lavender and other flowers. Again, in both cases, the wings are folded but one Common Blue - sorry that my pic is rather blurred - had a tear which allows a glimpse of the glorious topwings.

Two Geranium Bronzes partying in the sun. The lower one shows a glimpse of the bronze topwing which gives the species its name

One of our favourite swimming spots on the island was Vlichos, a couple of miles' walk along the beautiful coastal path from Hydra port, which some guidebooks refer to as 'Butterfly Bay', citing dark brown and black butterflies flipping about in the shade. Sure enough, we found quite a few of these - Freyer's Greylings which share the habit of the English Greyling of clasping their wings tightly together at rest, sliding the forewing back to form a triangle with the hindwing and then tilting towards the sun to cast the least possible shadow. All this makes them a bit of a nightmare to photograph, but I got a couple of snaps of examples just showing their bright eye, one of them on the blue shoe of a fellow coffee drinker in the port.

The skippers are always well-represented on Greek wildflowers and here are a couple of pictures of a Mallow Skipper and below them, a Sage Skipper, I think.

 

There was no shortage of Whites, meanwhile, both Large and Small...

...and the Painted Ladies which have been so successful in England this Summer were out in force on Hydra too.

Finally, some other enjoyable insects from the island: a shining Copper Chafer beetle which P spotted on one of the port's vertiginous flights of steps in time to stop me treading on it:

And a fine-looking grasshopper - possibly the Twin-striped:

Excellent butterflies from Greece then, ten species in all, one for each day of our holiday, plus a solitary and very familiar moth: a shy Silver Y. 

BUT, look what I discovered on my first day back here in Oxfordshire. FOURTEEN different butterfly species in our garden alone: Small and Large White,  Brimstone, Marbled White, Ringlet, Peacock, Red Admiral, Holly Blue, Hedge Brown, Common Blue, Small Skipper, Large Skipper and Meadow Brown.  The one I have (so far) failed to photo was yet another Painted Lady. The heatwave, the third this Summer, has created a butterfly paradise.

Mooning about

 

I doubt that I am alone in getting a kick from novelties and especially so after all my years of light-trapping which mean that a newcomer is a rare event. I thought that I had one this morning - the prettily-marked moth above and below - but actually it came to see me 12 years ago in July 2014.

Given the state of the human memory at the age of 76, that does almost make it a newcomer for me; I am quite looking forward to that time of life when forgetfulness makes many things 'new'. It is a Lunar-spotted Pinion and I wrote at some length about it here. I tickled this morning's into flying away and thus showing me both its wings as it powered up. Below are more conventional pictures taken as it slumbered.

Another slightly unusual visitor today was this oddly-marked Common Emerald below; it would be interesting to know what caused the dorsal fading. Alas, as I have often remarked and was doing only yesterday with the Green Pug which stayed overnight, green is doomed to fade very quickly in moths. My second picture below shows another one which also came last night but is clearly a few days older

The weather is lovely and warm now and other visitors were plentiful. Here's a selection:

Beautiful Golden Y - I think. They can be hard (for me) to distinguish from the good old Silver Y

Brown-line, Bright-eye which takes over at this time of year from its buddy the Bright line, Brown eye

The Box Tree moth which has caused such devastation to the country's hedges

The dear little 'bird dropping moth' - the Chinese Character. The name refers to the silvery-white squiggles

Two of an (almost) kind, both resting on a sunflower just by the light trap: the Mottled Beauty above and the Willow Beauty below

Finally, I enjoy stalking day-flying moths which you set up regularly from hedgerows and long grass. I'm pretty sure that this one is the quite large micro-moth, Anania crocealis.

Summer colours

The Big Daddy of my moths paid a call last night, showing off his or her waspish body with the warning yellow replaced by gentle pink. This is appropriate because the Privet Hawk moth can do no more harm than tickling your fingers in spite of its formidable appearance. I am surprised by how many children believe me when I reassure them about this; they tend to take the big insects happily on to their hands and suggest impractically that they would like to keep one as a pet.

The Scarlet Tiger is another sure-fire winner although usually too skittish to sit happily on a finger or thumb. It is a day-flying moth and partly for that reason much less sleepy than most when I examine the moth trap's eggboxes in the morning.  You may be wondering if you are new to moths why this one is called Scarlet. There's a clue in the picture below.

Yes, the underwing is a dramatic contrast to the forewings, intentionally as the moth flashes them to startle predators. The Tigers are beautiful creatures and often mistaken for butterflies though they neither swoop nor glide but jerk erratically about.

The little moth below may be dismissed as small and grey on a casual glance but look more carefully. Can you see the green? This elusive colour in moths fades very rapidly from its early freshness but it's still there on this Green Pug, like a very gentle, glittery sheen.

I've got this next one down on iRecord as a Dwarf Cream Wave but my photo was given a red dot, so I will have to wait and see until an expert rules. The pallid Waves are one of those groups of moths which still give me ID difficulties after all these years, like the pugs and assorted browny greyey Rustics etc.. 

This below, however, is a Small Scallop, I am sure, and a very dainty moth too, and after it comes a solitary White Satin on our garden table and then a quintet of micro-moths with their names beneath.

From the top left, we have pretty-in-pink Lozotaeniodes formosana, A Bird-cherry Ermine (the species which sometimes engulf trees and even parked cars in their vast larval webs),  Anania coronata, a frequent visitor, and finally another regular, yellow Agapeta hamana, and Parapoynx stratiotata or the Ringed China-mark. The Linnaean names, although cumbersome for such little creatures, can have a splendid ring.

Here's the Privet Hawk again shortly before I took measures to hide it from that little blur in the background of the first photo; my over-attentive robin. Famously cheeky, these determined birds regard my activities as a massive breakfast opportunity. I am as vigilant as I can be but sometimes fail to save to save a moth, usually because they rashly fly out of the trap rather than waiting for me to photograph them.  Still, I feel bad because I was the one who lured them here, within Cock Robin's darting range. Alas for the Pale Tussock, below. RIP. And yet, moths and their caterpillars are of huge importance in the bird food chain.

Next a Mayfly, delightfully elegant and graceful but mown down in swathes by riverside birds and seldom living for more than 24 hours. Then an excellent picture taken by a neighbour of a hoverfly about to nectar at a Pyramidal Orchid; and finally a Peacock caterpillar which was walking the Thames Path on Monday at the same time as me.