Latecomer

Here's a very pretty moth and a rather unexpected one: the Beautiful Hook-tip normally flies between late June and early August and yet here is one now, perched on the trap's bulb-holder like a Starfighter jet in Star Wars.

It's a local rather than common moth and I'm pretty sure I haven't muddled it with the similar but unrelated Scalloped Hook-tip which rests with its wings folded and has slightly duller wing patterning.  Here it is again for another look.

Our lovely warm summer has probably altered flight patterns; certainly the continuing mildness is bringing plenty of moths to the trap. There were four kinds of Sallow there this morning, some 20 specimens in all, eight Dark Rustics, three Blair's Shoulder-knots, Beaded Chestnuts aplenty and much else.

Not just in the trap, either. I played hide-and-seek for a while with moths lurking in the surrounding grass and on a nearby wall. Here are the winners - an Angle Shades, above, a Burnished Brass below and a Sallow below that. The booby prize for not really getting the skills of hiding goes to the little white chap at the very bottom. But judging by wing and body condition, he or she is getting old and so, probably, vague.

Sorry, couldn't get the focus off the grass...