Ready for take-off

A footnote to yesterday's post: the 'carpet' which I thought had fluttered off had only got as far as a different eggbox, rather a rain-sodden one, and here it is: not a carpet but (I think) an Early Tooth-striped.

Lurking nearby was another escapee, a classically faded Green Carpet. I ay 'classically' because green is not a colour which lasts in moths. The various Emeralds, for instance, lose their lustre very quickly and become dowdy like spinsters in Victorian novels. The phenomenon is so striking that Richard Lewington actually illustrates a faded Green Carpet in my Moth Bible. Here it is, alongside a painting of a fresh one.

Meanwhile, a belated note about a lovely walk which Penny and I took on Sunday - along the canal to Roundham Lock at Kidlington, through the fields by Begbrooke and up from its church and priory to the fringe of Bladon Heath. Hence through Bladon with Churchill's grave (where our neighbour's son as a schoolboy years ago had the lucrative assignment of surveying tourist numbers, an exercise which brought lots of generous tourists' dollars to a cute English child), and back on the northern fringe of Oxford airport.

Here two things were flying and I append a photograph of each. The two blurred ones - sorry - are a couple of the many Small Heath butterflies which were fluttering around, untroubled by the trainee pilots overhead. En route we also found this caterpillar.  If anyone can identify it, I will buy you a drink at the Oxford canal-side pub of your choice (between Lower Heyford and the city centre).