Pugsville

Some moths! In spite of another pretty chilly night, the eggboxes had a good range of visitors slumbering this morning, most of them at the Lilliput end of the spectrum. I am not very good at putting indicators of scale in my photos, relying lazily on the assumption that anyone reading this will be familiar with the standard UK eggbox.  But as I snapped the little pug moth, above, I fumbled in my dressing gown pockets and found the perfect thing; a brightly-coloured paperclip. So now you know how big, or rather small, a British pug moth is.

Of course, this size poses extra problems for the incompetent identifier, such as myself, and I am on very shaky ground in naming my tiny company this morning. This is in spite of the fact that I am the proud owner of a book devoted exclusively to pug moths, given to me by the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society after I subject them to a talk. Anyway, here are my other puggish guests:

I think that the first two are Mottled Pugs but the other pair are too indistinctly marked for me to make any meaningful guess. As ever, I will seek the boundlessly generous help of the experts on the Upper Thames Moths blog and report back. 

Update: that's been done and dusted with the UTB's usual speed and efficiency.  Martin Townsend - he of the marvellous Moth Bible - lists them, from the top, as Brindled, Oak-tree (the trap was near an oak tree appropriately), a second Brindled and Common.  The last was a feat of ID skill and Martin's fellow expert Dave Wilton, the UTM blogmeister and a highly skilled moth observer, comments admiringly:

Looking more closely now at the bottom one I can see how Martin arrived at Common Pug because of the warm brown colour and there's a hint of a whitish outer cross-line ending in a tornal spot. 

Many thanks to both, as always - and well-tried Edward in Comments too.

I am on safer ground so far as the larger moth arrivals go, and it is a pleasure to welcome the year's first Green Carpet and White Ermine, along with my second Poplar Hawk:

There was another debut, of the Flame Shoulder, a moth with the rare distinction of being the subject of light-hearted comment in the largely sober and serious (and extremely good) Moth Bible.  The wuthors write: "Comes to light and flies wildly, has an unfortunate habit of occasionally entering the ear of a moth recorder. On more than one occasion, this has necessitated a trip to hospital to remove the moth." I wonder what reception I'd get in current circumstances, if I had to go to hospital and ask for a moth extraction.  

On which score, I hope that all readers, their family and friends, are safe and well and that we are through the pandemic crisis before too long.