Spirit of the thing

A neighbour has had the marvellous experience of witnessing a moth hatch from a buried pupa and slowly dry and expand its wings in the sunshine. She watched fascinated and took these pictures, which she has kindly allowed me to use, as what she initially thought was some kind of grub shook itself slowly free from the soil and crept up a tree trunk, wings still little more than crumpled stubs.

She was also surprised at how quickly the wings reached their full extent and at the whole transformation of a creature on a par with Lowly Worm in Richard Scarry's children's books became something altogether more splendid.  The moth is a Large Yellow Underwing, which gives you an idea of how many millions of times this amazing process takes place in the course of 24 hour Summer hours.

Small wonder that the Ancients saw a parallel with humanity and what they hoped and believed happened to the human soul or spirit, soaring away into the sky when the body had worn out. The word psyche in Ancient Greek came to mean both 'spirit' and 'butterfly', giving us the legion of psychologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapist who are kept so busy today.

Curious to think that entomologists could have got there first, if they hadn't chosen a so much more cumbersome term for their profession. For a while, the 18th century equivalents of moth bloggers were known by the much nicer name of 'Aurelians' because of the insects' lovely colours, aurelia being a Latin term for 'golden'. I think that beats 'cut into sections', the translation of entomon, don't you?

Meanwhile the trap has gone a little quieter but is still attracting maybugs, much to my pleasure (although they give some others the creeps). Welcome too to another first for the year, the Brown Rustic below:

After the recent Campion with its lovely mauve, I think that today we have the very similarly patterned Lychnis - next photo - but I will test this on the Upper Thames Moths blog as I find them very hard to tell apart. Then I think we have Small Square-spot and Sloe and Oak-tree Pugs (but as you know, pugs have me all at sea).

Lastly, I am always interested in the effects on moths of their hazardous lives, and here is a White Ermine which has clearly had some adventures. Colour and pattern variation is fascinating too, hence my final pic of a curiously blotchy Common Wainscot.