Lord of the flies

I put the trap on top of the compost heap last night in the wild hope of attracting a passing Death's Head Hawk Moth like the one which flew into a lighted office in Witney in September. No such luck needless to say; instead, the eggboxes were predictably full of flies.

These varied from the gangly supermodel of a Crane Fly (I think - but Update: Toni in comments thinks differently, and correctly I reckon, that this is an ichneumon fly, a noted predator on caterpillars in which it lays its eggs so that its young can munch their way out, yuck. Toni has an excellent website here with a fascinating pic of a lacewing larva as per the comment below. Many thanks T) at the top via the delicate green lacewing (I also think) to the myriad of the little creatures dwarfed by a rather tatty micro in the third picture. Today is a bit of a fly day here; we are having a bonfire tonight and the guy will be not the brave Yorkshireman, Mr Fawkes, but a model of a Blandford Fly, a very nasty little bug which has spread from Blandford Forum in Dorset to these parts.

It has two characteristics apart from an extremely unpleasant bite: it likes clean river water, hence its spread, and the female needs to have a blood meal before mating. The natural world is overflowing with metaphors for angry columnists and other writers, and here is another one for them.

In the world of moths, I can offer you only this worn but still perky (judging by the gleam in its eye) Common Marbled Carpet and an interesting Black Rustic with a deformed left wing. The Black Rustic which came on Wednesday night had the same feature. I left it sleeping in the luxury pink eggbox by our front door, about 50m from the compost heap, but I think that it must be the same moth. Other overnighters amounted to one Sprawler, two Feathered Thorns and a single November Moth.