Surviving the damp

Glory be! A dry night at last and so the moth trap was lit, if only to see of anything small and with wings had managed to survive the downpours of the last month and more.

Lo! One moth had; this Dark Chestnut which was as deeply asleep (top pic) as any of the students just down the road after a Valentine's Night bender in Oxford. In their honour, I have made a vaguely heart-shaped close-up of it, above. Update: sorry, my first mis-ID of 2014. So soon...  It's a plain Chestnut, not a Dark one (even if it is rather dark). Peter Hall kindly puts me right in a comment on the excellent Upper Thames Moths blog to which I also post. Many thanks to him.

The moth was still asleep when I gently turned it over to rest on my lovely Christmas nightie (whose Scrooge-style matching cap I will feature in due course, later in the year). Another species abroad is the Red Sword-grass; a very nice one was Tweeted to me by a friend of a friend seeking an ID. In the hope of getting one myself, or even that enticingly-named moth the Spring Usher which is also on the wing in these dreary February days, I have turned on the lamp again tonight, in spite of forecasts of the rain coming back.

We have been lucky with the flooding although it is very nearby, as you can see from this picturesque view of the canal with the lovely remains of the deserted village of Hampton Gay in the background. Penny and I thought that POUYRI was a Welsh or possibly Hindi word but the very nice owner explained that it's an acronym. I won't spell out the whole thing on what is essentially a family blog, but the last four letters stand for 'unless you are invited'.