Keep away, I'm toxic

                           

The Cinnabar moth is one of the pleasures of Summer, outsmarted as a bright day-flying moth only by the Scarlet and Jersey Tigers. Its red and very dark green colouring is delightful and an interesting contrast to the yellow and black banding of its caterpillars. All stages of its life-cycle are poisonous to birds and the warning colouration is effective at keeping the moth safe. The black and yellow has also been adopted by the nuclear industry as a simple Danger code in a field traditionally dominated by red.

My daughter-in-law filmed another defence mechanism of the caterpillar - it can move extremely fast!  It is famously found on Ragwort, a lovely wildflower unjustly persecuted by the less tolerant among horse- and other animal-owners. Luckily, there is no way that efforts to suppress this vigorous plant will succeed. 

My daughter-in-law has been impressively active elsewhere in the moth field - 'impressively' because she has always had major hesitations about insects in general which our granddaughter, a terrific moth enthusiast as regular readers will know, has worked patiently and gently to ease. Here's a very nice picture of a Small Mapgpie micro taken by the d-i-l for instance. It would illustrate nicely the theory that moths' navigation is steered by a desire to reach the Moon (represented in the picture by the reflection of their Paper Moon lightshade).

She's also just sent this picture of a Marbled Beauty found in their house. What a beautiful, marvellously-patterned visitor, often passed un-noticed while sleeping on lichen which it so much resembles - mimicry camouflage, the opposite of the Cinnabar's warning colouration but equally effective as a defence.

Emily's flawless fingertips for scale are poignant for me because for the first time since 1978, I've just broken a pinkie. I diverted from the canal towpath on a mega-long walk home from Banbury to photograph the interesting treehouse below. As I made my way back, one of those big Chinook helicopters came whoop-whooping overhead and I looked up at the very moment my left foot slipped on mud and down I clumsily went. Ouch!  I hoped that it was only sprained and marched on for the six hours it took to get home, but no, it's a break.  At least I get loads of sympathy because it shows, unlike the nasty invisible sciatica which from time to time plagues poor P.

Here's a Then and Now of my two pinkie crises - the first was an addendum to a broken leg when I was knocked off my motorbike, fortunately almost right outside Bart's hospital in London. I got a nice lot of compensation with the finger adding extra because the other driver's lawyer accepted that fingers were important for journalists.

The injury hasn't interrupted moth activities, I'm glad to say. We had friends here yesterday who were keen to inspect the moth trap and here's my own set of battered but still beautiful fingers showing off a Barred Yellow before handing over a Poplar Hawk - one of the main 'all-Summer-long' species I which am grateful to get here.