Vestal visitor

We had a foggy journey back from London late last night and the garden was misty and very still when I put the trap out a little before midnight. I was clearly sleepy, too, as this morning I found that the transparent cowl had partially slipped off. Conceivably, a fox or badger might have nudged it but it would be a very brave animal that ventured so close to the dazzling mercury vapour light.

My last Vestal was
floating in the pool
on our holiday in
Portugal last month
- alive and duly rescued

Luckily, the extra gap hadn't enticed a couple of interesting arrivals to escape: my first two pictures show an immigrant Vestal, a species from the Mediterranean which has been arriving in unusual numbers in this part of the UK on the tailcoats of Hurricane Ophelia, as mentioned in recent posts. You can tell that it is an immigrant because of the yellowy shade which is generally found in Vestals from warmer climes which have spent less time in their chrysalises.  The ones which breed in Northern continental Europe and here (from eggs laid by immigrants earlier in the Summer) are paler and closer to Hollywood's ideal of the clothing worn by ancient Rome's Vestal Virgins from whom this dainty insect takes its name. My composite picture below contrasts this morning's arrival - on the left - with one which came in September 2013 and an NBC picture of Janet Stephens in a Hollywood Vestal role.

It was also good to welcome a Sprawler, that tweedy regular in mid-Autumn, and to see another Large Wainscot - all shown below. On the smaller side, I think the Plume moth with its distinctive T shape is probably just a Common Plume, Emmelina monodactyla, but if anyone knows different, please shout.

Lastly, it's always instructive to note the great variation you find within a moth species, as with these two November Moths below:

And very lastly, because I often berate brown and grey moths for their similarity and lack of pzazz, here is a fresh red-line Quaker looking actually rather fine: