I spy a bumper crop

Here's looking at you, kid. See below 

It's catch-up time today, with no spare moments to put out the trap last night or sort out eggboxes of dozing moths this morning. I've been too occupied in looking through the smaller arrivals which came with the Eyed Hawkmoth on Tuesday night; my first real bumper crop of visitors.

Trousermeister

I've featured the one directly above before, but I so like his woolly trews: a Pale Tussock which perched on the rim of the trap's bowl. Then there was a major favourite of mine, a regular in Leeds but only now arriving in Oxford, which chose to grip to the bulb flex. It's a Spectacle Moth and I think you'll see why in the picture at the top.

Spectacle sideways on

The Spectacle is quite a sepctable from sideways on too. Meanwhile the Common Wainscot, below, is an agreeable-looking moth, even when it creeps as far as it can into an eggbox cone. Gently ripping these open explains why I am always on the lookout for new boxes, which neighbours have kindly begun to supply. There are still quite a few from Yorkshire, though, as with the Eyed Hawk's choice of one from a farm at Burton Leonard.

Common Wainscot being shy

Then here is a Setaceous Hebrew Character, markedly different in shape and pattern from the straightforward Hebrew Character but sharing with it the dark mark which resembles the Hebrew letter 'nun'. Setaceous means 'bristly', an attribute which isn't immediately apparent unless it refers to the moth's emotional character.

Where are its bristles?

Next, Heart and Darts have been a favourite of mine since the very first days of the blog in 2008 when they featured in the first fortnight and a soap shop in New York came across them and sent a nice comment. They are not over-exciting to look at, but then that's also true of many very nice and interesting people.

Heart and Dart - maybe a good name for another TV cops series?

And so to what I think is probably an Engrailed although it looks to my hopeless eyes more like a Willow Beauty; but these fly later in the year. And then some returnees: two rather different Rustic Shoulder Knots (I think and hope) and a Shears.

Engrailed, I suspect

Rustic Shoulder Knot methinks

And again

The Shears scaling an eggbox cone

I'm inserting a close up of the Shears' little pincer marks to make the point. We could do with a pair of these to get obstinate picture-hanger nails out of the walls of our new house.


Finally, a rakish Angle Shades and a Treble Lines in its neat brown coat which to my way of thinking suggests Quadruple Lines as a more accurate name. Plus the distinctive, russet-blotched version of the Common Marbled Carpet.  I am in a good mood about Carpet moths because according to Dave Shenton (see comments on previous post), I correctly identified the Oblique Carpet yesterday.

Fighter plane - the Angle Shades

How many lines can you see?