Outriders

The trap is the home of the grey brethren at the moment, from unremarkable Heart and Darts to majestic Poplar Hawks which inevitably lose some of the allure for me by visiting the trap every time I put it out. I've not gone in for the sort of marking experiments I mentioned two posts back, but I would be very surprised if many of the are first-time visitors.

The colour therefore lies outside the little prison, in the form of the small but consistent species of apparently independent-minded moths which come to the light but stay outside the actual trap. The gayest of these is the Cinnabar, which has a habit of crash-landing in the grass as in the top picture. The little Clouded Silver had meanwhile chosen a leaf of one of the potato plants which I am growing to (a) get potatoes to eat and (b) in the probably vain hope of attracting a Death's Head Hawk moth.

This littly, finally, is Celypha lacunana unless I am much mistaken (which sadly is quite often the case).