Form an orderly queue

It's easy to forget in the quiet months (for moth watching) since November, just how busy the trap can become from early April on. How I managed to keep on top of it while I was working, I can no longer imagine. But it was, and is, such a consuming pleasure.

Saturday and this morning, Easter Sunday, have brought the year's first Prominents, no fewer than three species from that sleek and aerodynamic-looking tribe. They have an immediately recognisable way of resting like crouching cats. Here they are:  at the top, this morning's Lesser Swallow Prominent which chose to sleep on the house wall rather than inside the trap; and then below, in order, a Pebble Prominent and two Swallow Prominents.

I realise that the photos above have a rather 'Police Wanted' look to them, so here is something a little more artistic. This is a moth which I nearly missed during my eggboxes check because it was hanging perilously from the lip of the trap bowl. It's a Purple Thorn, a moth with another distinctive resting position, almost butterfly-like but with some of the grandeur of a Roman Emperor unfurling his royal purple robes. I photographed it shortly after sunrise from both sides and you can see how the camera, or rather its digital working system, tells two different stories - neither really a lie as the moth also changes appearance to the human eye in different light.

While in this cheerful part of the colour spectrum, here's another Herald which came on Friday night and adopted a rather striking, vertical dive pose (and there was a third one in the trap this morning):

And here are a couple of lovely 'firsts' for 2020, a Lunar Marbled Brown with its little moon (similar to that on the Purple Thorn and quite a number of other moths), followed by a Poplar Kitten, a member of a very attractive family of moths:

The house wall is an excellent place for me to spot moths; a little more challenging than simply working through the eggboxes, much as I like their colours and bold advertising claims (I mean, what is a 'Happy Egg'?)  I almost missed this Early Grey, below, for example, so well does its pattern fit into the stonework and lichen.  The birds seem completely incapable of seeing the sleepers which remain all day, as I mentioned in my last post with the Brindled Beauties and a Streamer. I will check up on these later on.  Mind you, I think that bird vision depends a lot on movement. The Brindled Pug  in my final photo was also undetected in his bed on the trap's canopy.  Or maybe he was too small to make a decent meal.

Oh and finally, finally, here's a Nut-tree Tussock. Quite a crowd, altogether.