Nursery World

I didn't think that I would find myself breeding Emperor moths again, after all the angst and turmoil of raising three previous broods on willow which dried-up and curled with annoying speed. But I couldn't resist the progeny of the Emperor which escorted Penny and myself to Windsor (for a boat trip, not the wedding), and I have been rewarded by their loyalty to hawthorn which lasts fresh longer.

They have been sharing their Tupperware home with the much larger and very fast-moving caterpillar in my second and third pictures (and featured in the previous post). But not any more. I appealed for an ID from the unfailingly helpful Upper Thames Moths blog. One of their friendly experts, Marc Botham, suggested that it looked like a Satellite moth cattie - a species known to eat other larvae. I have hastily released it on to a hawthorn bush, leaving behind only its poos, whose difference in size from the Emperorlets' show the difference, as pictured below.

Meanwhile the trap has produced plenty of interest and beauty on the less frequent outings which I am giving it this year, because of my other commitments. Here are some of the arrivals in the last week, all of them delightful to re-encounter:

From top left clockwise; standard Peppered, melanic ditto, Sallow Kitten (lovely creature), Gold Spangle and Cinnabar (I saw one of these day-flying too, on Tuesday), and Small Phoenix

Ditto: Clouded-bordered Brindle, Treble Lines, Common Swift,  ditto with more modest markings, three merry cockchafers, Coxcomb Prominent, Bee moth, Waved Umber

Ditto: Orange Footman from above and below, and another, different one ditto, Buff Ermine