Footloose...

...and fancy free - that's the apparent attitude of a large number of moths which, in the present lovely, warm weather - choose not to enter the trap but to take up residence on old poppies, potatoes and courgettes surrounding it.

Here are few of which the top one, a Peach Blossom on a poppy seedhead, is one of my all-time favourites. Lovely name, lovely patterning on the wings - pink, creamy white and a green-looking background which is really much more of a black. Strange tricks, the eyes can pull off.

Here it is again with a Coronet which jealously kept nudging it, so that my photo session was terminated early. I turned my attention instead to a newcomer for this year, the slightly battered Small Emerald below:  Update: sorry - thanks to my excellent Commentor for correcting me: this is a newcomer but it's a Common Emerald, not a Small One.

On the next-door courgette leaf was a Light Emerald. Update 2: and this is a Small Emerald, not a Light one. Many thanks, as ever.

And over on the spuds, a Swallowtail Moth.

Nearby on a bit of broken soil, blindingly obvious to our eyes but not apparently to birds (so long as it stays motionless) is a female Yellowtail

And a foot or so away from that, a Brimstone Moth.

Interesting that all these moths except the Peach Blossom and Coronet are at the pale and largish end of the moth spectrum. Ditto this female Ghost Moth which preferred the mercury vapour bulb's flex to the more nourishing surface of a plant.