A day in the life

The trap was by a garden wall on Sunday night and in the morning I found this Swallow Prominent resting on the grey stone. Thanks to the lockdown, Penny and I were around all day and I checked occasionally to see if it had gone.  It was an interesting experiment, if modest, because we had quite a lot of different weather: a cool start, warm sun by early afternoon, much colder by teatime and close to freezing once night had fallen.

So, at the top of the post is the moth as I found it, at 6.35am.  The same picture is in the top left hand corner of my composite, above, followed in a clockwise direction by the moth in warm sunshine at 3.30pm, cooler evening sun at 6.45pm and finally, when I stiffened my resolve and went out to check at 8.50pm with my clockwork torch, whirring its wings ready for take-off.  It was too cold to stayn and watch its actual departure, but it must have happened very soon afterwards.

I'm interested that the moth was prepared to sleep openly, albeit camouflaged, and that its presence went undetected by predators. I guess the main reason for the latter was that it didn't budge an inch but remained completely immobile.

Otherwise my chief pleasure during the day was photographing the year's first Green-veined White butterflyhere, an insect which I come to loathe as our brassicas develop in the veg garden, but very beautiful even so. It was lucky to catch it with the light illustrating the delicate patterning of its wings, specially for me as a very ham-handed photographer saved only by the incredible virtues of my iPhone camera.

I am keeping a lookout in the moth trap's eggboxes for a Pale Brindled Beauty and initially I had hopes of the moth on the left above. Instead, it serves to show how varied the standard Brindled Beauty can be. I posed it alongside the more typical, darker specimen which was one of another half-dozen who stayed the night.

Finally, there is no particular reason to show this Powdered Quaker, other than the beauty of its latte, milkshakey colour and gentle patterning. But that's a good enough reason for me.  No trapping last night on account of the cold. We'll see how the temperature goes today.