Tawny and Dots

The headline today sounds like one of those TV police duos such as Starsky and Hutch. Actually, it's a couple of nice but unassuming moths. One of them is new here - provided that I have identified it correctly, which regular readers will know is a big 'provided'.

Here it is and I think it's a Tawny-barred Angle, although I wondered for quite a while if it might be a melanistic or dark form of that familiar regular, the Riband Wave. This led me to a fascinating website thread by birdwatchers which you can read here, all about moths' internal genitalia and including a photograph of a Gatekeeper butterfly apparently trying to mate with a Painted Lady.

That sounds like something out of fiction, too. Mind you, the Painted Lady always has done; even as a child I used to wonder if it was slightly disreputable. Here's the second half of today's pair, meanwhile: the Straw Dot, below. A nice little moth which apparently has recently become scarcer in the north of England. So a special welcome.