Watching the Sun go out

Last night's solar eclipse was a marvellous experience which tugged at the root of what it means to be human and part of a community. We had to be in London and so made for Regent's Park where we swapped our home-made pinhole camera with children's converted cereal boxes, special specs bought by the prudent before supplies ran out and even the occasional colander for tiny, multiple images.

Here is a sequence of our own little sun, carried through the most home-made of cameras constructed by Penny, a sheet of cardboard with a very small hole pierced by a screwdriver. The final picture in my first quartet was taken through the viewing-specs lens of the kind woman with the black umbrella.  What a terrific experience!

P's invention also multi-tasked as a fan on the very hot train to London and a picnic tray on the journey home - shown above with my colander hat which in the event we left at home because it was too big to take with us.

I didn't put out the trap last night what with all the astronomical excitement but the moths have been coming steadily if unspectacularly for the last few very warm nights. On one of them, I placed the trap on a table beneath our Temporary Heatwave Gazebo which produced a rather ethereal effect: 

Here are some of the arrivals, from top left down: European Cornborer micro, Marbled Beauty, Common Purple and Gold, Elephant Hawk (the first for a few weeks after a flood in June and July), Sallow Kitten, Chinese Character, Waved Umber, Six-stripe Rustic and Light Emerald from below: 

Then Tawny Speckled Pug, Single-dotted Wave (with its many dots), Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing, Orange Swift, Cypress Pug (on the gazebo roof; did you know that 'gazebo' is an invented word contriving a future tense in Latin style for 'gaze'), Snout, Broad-barred White, Frosted Orange and another European Cornborer.

Finally, I have given this specially lovely micro a full picture of its own; behold the aptly-named Beautiful China-mark with a more modest companion whose ID is still be sorted out by poor old me. And a lovely fresh Anania coronata micro, known in the US as the Elderberry Pearl and here more aptly as the Spotted Magpie, contrasted with a more battered one which visited in June:

Fattie cattie

Tread carefully at this time of the year, not because you tread on my dreams but because adult moth caterpillars are on the move, searching for somewhere to pupate. This one inspecting my sock is a Buff-tip, the familiar 'cigar butt' or 'broken twig' moth which people often disturb from bushes. Interestingly, the species' caterpillars initially eat together on sallow and similar leaves, as a family before setting off to forage singly when they are the moth equivalent of teenagers.

Meanwhile the Poplar Hawks keep up their daily residency, usually motionless and grey in their traditional resting position but occasionally on the move and showing their hindwing warning colouration like the one below.

Their companions in the trap have included Canary Thorn,  Small Mottled Willow and the very small and very pretty Least Carpet from above and below.

Finally, also from below, a Scorched Carpet and then a modestly-coloured but intricately patterned Poplar Grey.

Literal Naming

 

When my granddaughter was small and enjoying the excitement of using language for the first time, she had a very straightforward system of naming toys as 'Yellowy Duck' or 'Greeny Owl', taking their colour as her guide. She was at one with some of the moth and butterfly-namers of 18th century England whose famed inventiveness with coinings such as the Clifden Nonpareil or Scorched Carpet went in tandem with a literalness, as in this occasional visitor, the Tawny-barred Angle.

Tawny, barred and angular it indeed is, as well as being slightly more common than usual this year. The day before the relatively smart specimen above arrived, I had my first example of the season; the more faded moth below which has been apparently around for a little longer or had a harder time.

The TBA comes in two main versions and both of mine seem to have a little of each albeit predominantly the colouring of the standard form. Here they are from the Moth Bible, followed by a photo which shows how deceptive cameras (or in my case my iPhone) can be. The moth was resting on the side of the trap's black bowl in a spot whose lack of light which played havoc with the digital, light-searching lens.

Busy times continue in the warm and sunny weather although I join with everyone else in the country in hoping for rain soon. There will be a huge amount of data processing under way this Winter as scientists work out how many moths and other insects have moved to the UK as a result of the warming of our climate. Here are some of my other guests: A Common White Wave pretending to be a Holly Blue butterfly; a Snout, an Angle-shades, a Clouded Border and a Tree-lichen Beauty.

Then we have a Broad-barred White, a regular visitor but in modest numbers,  a Common Carpet, a welcome sample of green with a Light Emerald snoozing in an eggbox alongside a Green Carpet, and the Light Emerald in all its own glory.

Onwards with a September Thorn on the rim of the trap's transparent cowl; all the Thorns often prefer the outside of the trap or cling to plants or walls nearby; a Lime-speck Pug (one of my two candidates for renaming as the Bird-poo, along with the Chinese Character), two Poplar Hawks which also preferred a grass stem and stayed on it all day, un-noticed by predators because remaining absolutely still; and a White-spotted Pug (I think but the bowl plays havoc with the camera as mentioned above).

So to a Silver Y (just after my Light Crimson Underwing neighbour sent a vid clip of one in her house),  a European Cornborer micro, Ostrinia nubilalis, which was a rare immigrant until its population took off in the 1930s, a Maiden's Blush - lovely name and lovely moth but in awful light here - and ditto a September Thorn and Orange Swift, forming a rather appealing duo. 

And finally a Sallow Kitten, showing its pretty colouring from the side, and a Ringed China-mark micro which rejoices in the far from micro botanical name botanical name of Parapoynx stratiotata.

Brightly-coloured Jersey

The rise and rise of the Jersey Tiger moth is a reason for great happiness. Since 1990, when it was still an immigrant rarity largely confined to Devon, it has colonised rapidly across the Southern UK and is now being recorded from the North. As you may know and can certainly see here, it is a wonderfully colourful insect, so much so that in places such as the Upper Thames Butterfly Sightings web page it makes appearances as a sort of honorary butterfly.

It is also a glorious photographic trophy on Mediterranean holidays, as I've described in previous posts and you may have seen it in Rhodes' famous 'Valley of the Butterflies' which are in fact Jersey Tiger moths.

The 'butterfly' status is also partly a result of the species fondness for flying by day unlike almost all other moths and, when flying, showing those glorious hindwings which are usually demurely concealed when the insect is at rest. in that mode, the reason for its name becomes clearer, the tiger-stripes of creamy yellow and black.

In the second picture above, it is resting alongside a thumbnail micro which shows that, although not large, it is a decent-sized moth as well. When I have seen one suddenly zigzag across the garden on recent sunny days, I have often had a sudden thought - hope! - that it might be a fast-flying fritillary of the sort I've yet to see nearer here than Bernwood Forest 14 miles away or - a solitary female Silver-washed - at Boar's Hill's Matthew Arnold Nature Reserve half that distance from my home.    

I have never had much luck at persuading Jersey Tigers to show their petticoats by tickling them in the eggboxes because they promptly fly away, but in the case of the top two photos, I was lucky that one got into our garden shed and fluttered in panic against the sunlit windows. It quickly grew tired of these exertions and forgot to rest with its wings folded back. I got my photograph and then cupped it in my hands and sent it soaring off into the sky.

For more than 60 years, I have had two Jersey Tigers in my butterfly and moth collection, a relic from the days when cameras affordable by a schoolboy were hopelessly inadequate to capture decent images of butterflies and moths. Even the expert photographs in famous books such as Professor E B Ford's Butterflies in the Collins New Naturalist series were inadequate compared to the results from a modern iPhone.

Over the years, as you can see from the moths above and the Garden Tigers to their right and Cream-spot Tigers below, the colours have faded although it is just possible that the pinned moths are the form lutescens which replaces the red with yellow in both insects. Alas, I caught the moths on holiday abroad and no longer know, although I think that I would remember any rarity I found in those youthful, pot-hunting days.