Danger, Keep Off

I introduced you reluctantly to my robin the other day, pretty and cheeky but the bane of my life when it comes to keeping the moths safe in the morning. Mind you, Nature is very unsentimental about such things. His partners in crime are various blackbirds and on Saturday one of these was the victim rather than the aggressor. I went to investigate a tremendous racket of alarm calls from the hedge which usually means the presence of a cat. On this occasion, sadly, it was a magpie which had got at one of the blackbirds' nests.

I raised anti-bird measures on the Upper Thames Moths blog but my indispensable helpers there are made of tougher stuff than I am. The webmaster Dave Wilton, who has an amazing tally of species at his trap across the county border in Buckinghamshire, gets up at dawn - while the birds are occupied in chorussing, he explains - and brings the trap indoors to safety before going back to bed.  I may try this but on the whole, once I am awake, I stay that way.

Not that it mattered entirely this morning because the moth at the top was unmolested in its very obvious perch on the table right by the trap. It's a Cinnabar as you probably know; the species is one of the most widely-recognised of UK moths, as are its yellow-and-black-banded caterpillars.  Both are poisonous to birds and tend to get left alone. Interestingly, the caterpillars' warning colours are the same as those we use for nuclear radiation danger. I guess that the adult insect's greeny-black and red has the same effect, especially when the hindwings are flaunted, as in my second picture which show the moth taking its leave.

There were another three Cinnabars in the trap itself and I watched two of them take flight and head off to the shelter of a big walnut tree more than 100 yards away. They were clearly visible in the early morning sunshine and there were plenty of birds about. But they knew better than to get involved.

Elsewhere in the eggboxes, I especially like this beautiful little micro, which I think is Cochylis molliculana, a relatively recent colonist in the UK and new for me if I am correct. It's extremely tiny but lovely to look at via the wonders of the iPhone.

Also on the small side, for a macro moth (see scale pic with eggbox remnants), is this Middle-barred Minor form pallida (I think; hopefully Edward will put me right if I'm wrong): 

And then we have a freshly-hatched Garden Carpet, a well-marked Common Swift, a Willow Beauty and a Figure-of-80.  And that's it. A nice and varied guest list.