Things have started at last

Behold!  A moth! No, moths plural. At last, the season has begun after weeks of cold and wet. Not that it's turned warm exactly; last night's temperatures were hovering around zero. But the first of the many eggboxes which I've accumulated over the winter months produced this: a handsome Satellite Moth with its flying saucer wing marking attended by two satellites.


Yesterday I was down at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, preparing a piece for the Guardian (yes, I have retired, but there are one or two bits and bobs to clear up). It's going to be about a memorial to the work of the Friends' Relief Services and the Friends' Ambulance Unit in which my father served as a conscientious objector in World War Two. As a result, I was with Quakers, those excellent people; and by happy coincidence my Satellite Moth was with Quaker Moths. There were five Common Quakers for a start and here's one of them.




Also in the trap: what I believe to be a Clouded Drab, a truly demeaning name which ought to be changed by the Global Moth Authorities as I have demanded previously. It is attractive and subtly patterned in its modest way.

And finally this, below. I think in my disorderly way which is the despair of my mothing advisors, that it's a Small Quaker. There were three of them. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Meanwhile, I just had a look back at the blog last year and although April seems to have been a bit bleak, I had more than 50 assorted Quakers visiting in one night in late March and a rich range of other moths in the month which this year has been all but blank