Immigrant invasion

Sorry for my Daily Express-style headline but it is true, unlike much of the stuff in that paper (which we have delivered here; one of the novelties of living with 97-year-old Mum-in-law). Why they haven't latched on to the genuine arrival in the UK of thousands, indeed probably millions, of the tiny foreign Diamond-back Moth is a mystery. As Dave Wilton notes on the ever-excellent Upper Thames Moths blog, its larvae may even be found on supermarket broccoli.

Amazingly - because these are tiny creatures as I hope you can tell from the eggbox context of my pic - he reared one which then hatched after only nine days in its pupa, accounting for the epic numbers involved in Diamond-back invasions.  Like the UK's 75 million field voles which I mentioned the other day, this huge increase in our wildlife population passes almost entirely without notice. I bet the Blue Tits and their like are aware, though.

Otherwise, my return to light-trapping after ten days produced a lot of Common Swifts and Treble Lines, one of the latter shown with a graceful White Ermine in my top pic. And there was also this Brown Rustic, above. I'm always flummoxed initially by brown moths and was briefly wondering (because of the markings shown in the second pic) whether it might be a Satellite, way out of that moth's season which ends with April. I know that pride is a sin but I am just a bit self-satisfied about working out the correct answer. When my last Brown Rustic came, on June 6 last year, I needed a kindly commentator's help.

We do indeed live and learn.