A Helpful Vestal

 The Vestal is a beautiful moth but also a very enterprising one, capable of migrating from the Continent to the UK every year in spite of its thumbnail size. It takes its name from both the air of purity given by the simple, delicate colouring and specifically the pinkish-purple band which resembles the stripes on the ceremonial robes worn by the eponymous women in Ancient Rome who ran the temple of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth.

My photos of Vestals are normally like the one below as the moth is almost always crouched with its wings tightly folded and seldom reacts when tickled or otherwise disturbed. I was lucky that a tumble of eggboxes temporarily disconcerted the one above and I was quick enough to capture the full spread of its wings.

It is a good time of year for fragile-looking 'Laura Ashley' moths and one of the largest and most striking is the Swallowtail, below. Almost ghostly in colouring and flight, it usually has a fairly brief, single flight window in July but the current weather has played pop with orthodoxy. This is probably a second generation example, freshly emerged from its chrysalis and blessed with the return of warm, dry weather.

The Light Emerald is another such but around in much larger numbers and for a longer period. Its lovely green is repeated in the humble lacewing, second below, whose wings when tilted in the light also glow with purple and pink.

The last of my regular sallow moths has turned up, the actual Sallow with its scrambled egg colouring, tones shared by the little micro Carcina quercana which has recently been given the very literal-minded English name of Long-horned Flat Body. The lovely pink background to the second example is Me.

Away from these pretty moths, we have a purposeful Lunar Underwing, a very common arrival now that late Summer is upon us, and an alarming-looking but sleepily docile hornet stumbling dozily from one eggbox to a second.

A Green Thought

Oh what a lovely moth came this week! A Scarce Silver Lines which is one of the greenest of the UK's relatively few green moths and very seldom encountered by me. Indeed I thought that this visitor was the seventh of the debut moths which have arrived this year, but on checking, I found that I have had one previous stay here in Oxfordshire; forgotten either through age or because I initially identified it wrongly as the more common (and also very lovely) Green Silver Lines.

Another came to my trap in Leeds in the first year of this blog when I noted that two had visited the trap four years earlier in 2004, the very earliest days of my light-trapping. So I must get my act together so far as my memory is concerned. Not an unusual problem at the age of 76, which is some consolation.

Meanwhile above is another picture of this week's example, showing its beady eye and, below,  a view of the delicious insect from overhead followed by another showing it inside the trap's bowl where the green seems to glow even more in the relative darkness; and finally a more distant photo of it next to a Small Fan-footed Wave to give scale. They are not very big moths.

 Here's the little Wave again below, along with my somewhat less elegant fingers, and below that a nice, sharply-patterned little Cypress Pug, a Toadflax Pug, a Riband Wave and a Small Bloodvein.

One of the things I always keep in my pocket is a small penknife because the saying 'You never know when you might need it' is absolutely true, I was cleaning it the other day, a process which involves getting all the blades out at the same time. I was reminded of this the following morning by this similarly-shaped group of Large Yellow Underwings.

Finally, this sadly-expired Small White, one of our commonest butterflies and a deadly foe of cabbage and other brassica growers, struck me as very lovely on careful inspection.  I zoomed in on its wings and then did the same with one of the many Centre-barred Sallows which are currently visiting, in an effort to capture the shining beauty of the scales.

Oranges and... Oranges

Another of the early Autumnal Sallow family arrived last night: the Orange Sallow with its simple colouring but very delicate pattern of slender lines. Given that all the Sallows are orange in one shade or another, it was lucky to be chosen to carry its simple name. But perhaps it deserves it on the grounds of elegance alone. 

Meanwhile another of the Mocha and Wave family paid a second visit, a Small Bloodvein, alongside an equally Laura Ashley-like relative, the Lesser Cream Wave in my second picture below.

It was good, too, to host a Red Underwing after a couple of weeks absence following my Light Crimson Underwing excitements last month. This specimen was a bit tattered and battle-worn but flew off powerfully after a few minutes of recovering and waking from its overnight sleep. 

Finally, here is an old faithful which makes regular appearances every few weeks in the trap: the Angle Shades with its rakish, jetplane shape and the leading edges of its wings furled, umbrella style, like the rarer Lilac Beauty, found by a neighbour, which I recently discussed. 

Maidenly delights

The family of mochas and waves, known scientifically as the Sterrhinae, has been very good to me this year. The Mocha itself, a moth for which I have long hoped, at last paid a visit as did a Jersey Mocha or Blair's Mocha, whose identity is still in the hands of the experts at iRecord. 

My latest caller is a regular but only occasionally; one of the most delicate of the family and with perhaps the most appealing name: the Maiden's Blush. Here it is, blushing away on my pyjamas which appear on so many of my photos as I rise before morning tea to examine the trap.

A second nice surprise was the even more occasional arrival of a Bulrush Wainscot, one of the largest of another elegant family of moths, the Noctuidae, and a testament to the fact that we have plenty of bulrushes growing round here on ponds and beside the Oxford Canal. 

 

Below is a Common Wainscot, the most regular of the family to call here as its name suggests. I am sorry, I should have provided a scale but it is less than half the size of its Bulrush relation. Perhaps the magnification of the eggbox structure shows that. 

My examination of the trap's contents is watched these days by not just one but a pair of robins, possibly brothers from a Spring brood, which compete for territory in the garden. This is actually a bonus as they spend more time jealously keeping an eye on one another than watching for errant moths.

Here is a tiny scrap of a micro, the sort which I often fail to bother to photograph, but I am glad that I did because of the distinctive little pink mark.  I am currently trying to ID it and will update this when I do. Update: and now I have done and - silly me - this is actually a macro moth, an extremely small one but well-known, indeed notorious as an agricultural pest. It is a Pale Mottled Willow, an immigrant moth which has settled here all too successfully. I've note it before, but at my age short-term memory plays tricks.

Next a Willow Beauty with a curious marking on its left forewing which I plan to ask about on the Upper Thames Moths Facebook page. Again, I will update if any interesting information comes from that. Update: and they have, Many thanks for interesting suggestions, shown in a snapshot of the FB replies, just below the pic of the moth.

Finally among the current moths, two Whitepoints in slightly different colour tones, exaggerated for good measure by the iPhone. 

The sunshine meanwhile continues to bring butterflies, which have been exceptional this Summer. Here is a Brown Argus on our vegetable patch and one of a huge new brood of Speckled Woods whose males engage in their curious spiralling combat flights in the mottled shade which they love so much.

And here's a female Common Darter dragonfly having a rest for once, amid its high-speed flights round the garden hawking for little flies, and lastly a hornet, fierce-looking but amiable although we're relieved that their nest in our eaves last year has not been revived.