Flaring up

I have had two experiences of flaring colours in the last week, one little more than the size of my thumbnail, the other taking up hundreds of thousands of miles of sky. The first is a Red-green Carpet, a scrap of a moth which I can admire for ages because the colours and patterns are so subtle and fine.

The second was the sunset that night, a fantastic display of red and orange and pink with a little blue to make the palette more intriguing. Since my earliest years, I have marvelled that we get this free display on so many evenings, and often something similar at dawn.  

Its effect on moths' behaviour is a matter of debate but I imagine that alternative sources of bright light reduce the moth trap's attractions while they last. That is often said of the Moon and I keep meaning to attempt some sort of scientific study of catches at the full and new moons. I fear that it will have to wait until next year. Ditto a study of temperatures and moth variety and numbers after this exceptionally sunny and dry Summer.

Inside the gloomy recesses of the trap, with its circle of black plastic wall, I have been treated to some good shows of colour too.  Here are the remains of a Yellow Shell against the beautiful background of my pyjamas (my thumb addimg scale), followed by the shining golden spaceship markings of a Satellite, so exactly like the alien craft which we targeted in the old 'shoot 'em up' game of Space Invaders.

Next we have a Beaded Chestnut, a gently glowing moth, the Rosy Tabby micro aka Endrotricha flammealis, and a lovely Treble Brown-spot, one of the 'Laura Ashley moths' reminiscent of girls in wafty milkmaid dresses in the 1960s.

About the half the size of that is this Double-striped Pug below; the second picture with the trap bulb and my lovely hand gives you a notion of the scale, I hope. Then we shift gear abruptly to a gloomy Deep Brown Dart and a second one which has had a rough time with birds by the look of its wings.

And so, by way of a Pale Tussock caterpillar showing its appealing face, to the brightest sight of the week: another of the many, vigorous-flying Clouded Yellows which have reached Oxfordshire in one of their 'invasion' years.  These go back in the records to 1868 when the future Reverend Harrison, then a boy of 11, sat on a sea cliff at Marazion in Cornwall and saw “a yellow patch out at sea, which as it came nearer showed itself to be composed of thousands of Clouded Yellows, which approached flying close over the water, rising and falling over every wave till they reached the cliffs, when I was surrounded by clouds which settled on every flower…”  The butterfly, which had previously been known as the Spotted Saffron, was dulygiven its current name.

Yet another new arrival

I have no right to expect a wholly new moth at this time of the year but here we are: my first-ever Clancy's Rustic, a species which only made known landfall in the UK in 2002. Who spotted it? A Mr Clancy, of course; a mighty name in the modern world of moths who had the knowledge to be sure that this was something different when it visited his light trap in Kent.

I had the same conviction this morning because although I am famously hopeless at sorting out the subtle differences between brown and grey moths and their often confusingly similar patterns, I was sure that I had not seen this before. 

Here, above, is Mr Clancy himself, a chap who has done a tremendous amount to spread interest in moths, including co-founding the excellent magazine Antropos which gave me the term 'Flight Arrivals' for regular records of incoming moths. I don't think that he will ever match Dr Kenneth Blair, the late head of entomology at the Natural History Museum, who has three moths named after him because he made their first known UK findings, living at the very busy Flight Arrivals spot of Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. But he certainly deserves the Rustic.

The moth has long been known to wider science, unsurprisingly, and was one of 193 (and 52 butterflies) identified by the cheery-faced entomologist above, Christian Friedrich Freyer, who worked in Augsburg. In 1836, he gave it the sonorous name of Caradrina Kadenii, taken from the Balkan river Drin and an entomological colleague of Freyer's in Dresden, Karl Kaden. In German it's called Kaden's Owlet.  I could go on and on, but I'm very happy to add this guest to my list.

It was a good night in other respects, nice and warm in this Indian Summer which we are enjoying, and with other arrivals including a Brick, above, which calls on me only seldom. Then we have a Box Tree moth, the notorious hedge scourge, peeping at you, a rich and lustrous Black Rustic which would grace a funeral cortège (maybe I should have badges of them made for mine), a Mother of Pearl micro, a Snout and a Rosy Rustic:

The eggboxes also provided shelter for a Yellow-tail (hiding the reason for its name, as almost always), a Red-green Carpet, a Gold Triangle Moth micro and a White-point, the last rather like the Brick but with white spots instead of grey-black.

Oh and an unusually restful hoverfly, Helophilus Pendulus, whose name - since I'm so heavily into nomenclature today - means 'Dangling Marsh-lover'.

Finally, as one of the Caesars no doubt remarked and as regular readers certainly know, I can never resist a Vestal. Here's a composite of a lovely one of these delicate annual immigrants from the continental mainland which stayed the night. It has ever so slightly got its fringed white knickers in a twist.

Sculptural Moths

 

Moths have enjoyed an increasingly high cultural profile during my years of light-trapping, with books, pictures and textile designs ever more disposed to choose them as a subject or inspiration. Now they have made it into sculpture with these three curious objects just down the road from here, near a new development which swarms with thrifty pensioners such as Penny and myself because the café offers excellent deals on hot drinks and buns. 

You may ask what these 'frozen sneezes' as my younger son happily describes them have to do with moths. The answer is that artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, who coincidentally was a university contemporary of the said son, believes them to represent the clouds of scent released by flowers and shaped by the batting wings of moths as they seek to pollinate in the dark.  You can read more about them here.  

They are too clumsy for my liking but maybe moths do see the misty world of  smoke and scents as more solid that it appears to the human eye. At any rate, they make an excellent talking point in the parsimonious pensioners' haunt and all publicity is good publicity for moths, except for the cursed legacy of the handful of species whose larvae eat high quality clothes. 

The world of actual moths in my garden and light trap is currently largely monochrome and unexciting, though the two different colourways (out of three) of the Lunar Underwing, above, make an interesting contrast. The third is more orangey and there are subtler variations within each broad band. It's harder to find compliments for the Deep Brown Dart, first two photos below, or the Lesser Yellow Underwing which keeps its eponymous petticoats tightly veiled.

The Beaded Chestnut, below, is a little bit more appealing although less bright than most examples of this species; and I actually approve of the particularly example of the Square-spot Rustic below that, which I hereby nickname the OK Moth.

The next moth is greatly superior, my first example this year of the very smart Autumnal Rustic which looks like an officer in the Confederate army in the American Civil War. (I hope that they are not heading for another one). Then we have the fine black Darth Vader moth, unsurprisingly officially called the Black Rustic, plus a second one giving us a glimpse of its contrastingly shiny white underclothes, and a little Tawny-barred Angle which has seen better days.

Rounding off the moths, I can never resist a green one, as you know, and here is another Brindled Green creeping into an eggbox niche, followed by three differently-sized and -coloured Willow Beauties and a lovely Vestal; amazing that this thumbnail-sized moth is an immigrant from across the Channel, albeit using high-level winds and air currents rather than small boats.

Butterflies meanwhile continue to enjoy the sunshine and here are a Red Admiral and Speckled Wood, both about in our village in abundance, with the Speckled Wood males performing their curious spiralling dance in the dappled sunlight by the canal which is their favourite spot. The entomological jury is out on whether this is some sort of courtship display or an 'I can spiral faster and higher than you' competition.

And so to conclude, here is a Giant House Spider (we are entering an arachnaphile young cousin's competition to find the biggest) and a crane fly, better-known in every way as a Daddy Long-legs.