Darth Vader

I've fallen behind again because of guests and other duties, including a spell in the veg patch and tinned food store in advance of today's Harvest Festival. Produce goes to the local food bank, a sign of difficult times for too many people even if prosperity seems to be returning.

So I must catch up later on my first return to trapping at home after Corfu, on Wednesday, and a very enjoyable moth morning on Saturday with West Oxfordshire naturalists near to that beautiful place, Minster Lovell (and its fascinating associated Chartist settlement Charterville, whose neat little Georgian bungalows formed smallholdings with six or so acres and a cow or two).

Instead, today is the turn of that Darth Vader among moths, the Black Rustic. There were two of them this morning, my first of the year. The one at the top declined to enter the trap but was lurking next to an appropriately sinister crack in a wall - one of the entrances, maybe, to the moths' equivalent of the Death Star. The second one was in the eggboxes but still contrived to slide into a corner with a definite air of menace.

These are definitely Autumn moths and so, in spite of our mellow late return of summer, the seasons roll on.